Drainage and flooding

How much of the council's recorded discussion was about drainage and flooding, 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.
206items on this topic
139meetings
1.4%share of discussion (era average)
3contentious items
1divided votes

Items per year

YearItemsShare of the year's items ContentiousMean contentionWords
19631 1% 0.1487
19641 1% 0.2261
19662 3% 0.17118
19683 2% 0.13252
19692 1% 0.07107
19709 5% 0.13808
19712 2%1 0.30115
19721 1% 0.1263
19731 1% 0.1042
19741 1% 0.0041
19752 1% 0.1655
19762 1% 0.19155
19771 1% 0.1542
19784 2% 0.09136
19825 3% 0.09358
19835 2% 0.12438
19862 1% 0.1278
19871 1% 0.1530
198812 4% 0.091,225
19893 1% 0.18218
199031 13%1 0.111,954
19984 2% 0.06166
20001 0% 0.2825
20011 0% 0.1025
20027 4% 0.06899
20052 3% 0.12231
20061 3% 0.0489
20072 3% 0.08156
20085 2% 0.0026
20105 2% 0.0026
201112 9% 0.0069
20121 0%1 0.55174
20133 0% 0.07141
20148 2% 0.12507
20166 1% 0.07447
201710 1% 0.03391
20181 0% 0.0013
201910 1% 0.01269
202010 2% 0.07401
20212 0% 0.0049
20225 1% 0.07304
20237 1% 0.12510
20241 0% 0.0536
202510 2% 0.03333
20261 0% 0.005

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.