Nuisances and code enforcement

How much of the council's recorded discussion was about nuisances and code enforcement, and how contentious it was, year by year.

Scores of the written record, normalized by era. Minutes are the clerk's summaries, not transcripts: tone is muted and the style changed with each clerk and era, so every score is compared only with meetings of the same minute-style era (1962-1979 narrative minutes, 1980-2004, 2005-2016, 2017 on) and shown as a percentile of that era. Signals: divided and failed votes, motions that died for lack of a second, tabled or postponed items, amended motions, ordinance readings that stalled, hearings with objections, public appearances, the length of an item's discussion compared with its era, and words such as "objected", "protest", "concern", "thanked" or "commended", each kept with the sentence it came from. Only pages whose reading scores at or above the archive's score target count. The record is scored, not people: no resident is named or scored, and members appear only through their recorded votes. Meetings named as the most contentious or most congenial are published only after a person reviewed them.
239items on this topic
170meetings
1.6%share of discussion (era average)
13contentious items
8divided votes

A recurring struggle: contentious items in 6 decades (1960s: 1, 1970s: 2, 1980s: 2, 1990s: 1, 2010s: 2, 2020s: 5).

Items per year

YearItemsShare of the year's items ContentiousMean contentionWords
19632 3% 0.04121
19642 2% 0.02114
19651 1% 0.0036
19661 1% 0.1493
19675 9%1 0.20313
19681 1% 0.1650
19693 2% 0.11144
19701 1% 0.1261
19711 1% 0.1035
19726 5%1 0.24405
19731 1% 0.2958
19752 1% 0.1680
19765 3% 0.06241
19775 3% 0.05183
19787 4% 0.10346
19793 6%1 0.23160
19807 7% 0.11589
19819 3% 0.11531
19826 3% 0.15622
198314 4%2 0.211,147
198410 3% 0.14545
19856 4% 0.07508
19865 3% 0.06269
19875 3% 0.06253
19885 2% 0.19245
19894 2% 0.10401
19903 1%1 0.26118
19984 2% 0.08260
19993 1% 0.10105
20004 2% 0.06366
20014 2% 0.06188
20023 2% 0.02141
20071 2% 0.1046
20086 2% 0.0027
20091 2% 0.07194
20101 0% 0.008
20113 2% 0.0010
20124 1% 0.16257
20138 1%1 0.12383
20144 1%1 0.16261
20153 1% 0.12150
20161 0% 0.0036
20173 0% 0.17221
20183 0% 0.10164
20191 0% 0.0592
20201 0%1 0.43130
202130 5%3 0.101,364
202214 2%1 0.08584
20236 1% 0.08384
20241 0% 0.0251
20252 0% 0.12198
20268 2% 0.02331

Reviewed examples

Examples appear here once meetings on this topic have been reviewed by a person.

JSON

Data last updated October 21, 2026. Built from the archive's documents; see how the data is built.