Growth, annexation and zoning

How much of the council's recorded discussion was about growth, annexation and zoning, 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.
2,601items on this topic
657meetings
17.9%share of discussion (era average)
113contentious items
61divided votes

A recurring struggle: contentious items in 6 decades (1970s: 6, 1980s: 31, 1990s: 2, 2000s: 9, 2010s: 60, 2020s: 5).

Items per year

YearItemsShare of the year's items ContentiousMean contentionWords
19621 3% 0.1376
19634 6% 0.09218
19643 3% 0.13246
19656 7% 0.171,027
19665 6% 0.05222
19672 3% 0.0059
19682 2% 0.0554
196911 6% 0.05483
197010 6%1 0.14722
19715 6%1 0.17417
197210 8%2 0.15576
19731 1% 0.1044
19758 5%1 0.13392
197613 8% 0.07553
19779 6% 0.12605
197819 10%1 0.131,121
197911 21% 0.04483
19809 8%2 0.13615
198194 31%11 0.167,794
198246 25%9 0.236,212
198377 23%4 0.136,966
198437 12%3 0.123,918
198519 13% 0.111,261
198618 11% 0.091,068
198727 18% 0.132,043
198826 8%2 0.123,377
198918 8% 0.091,449
199026 11% 0.061,538
199868 27% 0.095,121
199967 16%2 0.105,194
200066 33%3 0.115,312
200165 28%2 0.115,373
200233 18%1 0.142,831
200537 54%2 0.125,755
200611 28% 0.12744
200717 27% 0.141,522
200837 14% 0.031,364
200928 53%1 0.102,398
201018 8%1 0.05418
20117 5% 0.02105
201232 12% 0.103,014
2013124 20%26 0.187,570
201461 15%2 0.083,038
201571 15%8 0.144,838
2016213 26%9 0.0712,677
2017238 31%7 0.0512,061
2018166 22%6 0.076,706
2019161 22%1 0.047,557
202081 14%1 0.063,632
202187 14% 0.043,734
2022120 20% 0.045,378
2023105 19%3 0.064,992
202455 9%1 0.062,422
202545 7% 0.011,103
202671 13% 0.043,076

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.