Other

How much of the council's recorded discussion was about other, 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.
1,985items on this topic
712meetings
8.9%share of discussion (era average)
61contentious items
51divided votes

A recurring struggle: contentious items in 7 decades (1960s: 3, 1970s: 1, 1980s: 2, 1990s: 1, 2000s: 3, 2010s: 49, 2020s: 2).

Items per year

YearItemsShare of the year's items ContentiousMean contentionWords
19623 10% 0.05107
196311 16% 0.06487
196416 17% 0.06606
19656 7% 0.04222
196613 16% 0.09490
196710 17%2 0.15458
196823 19% 0.091,175
196935 19%1 0.071,376
197026 14% 0.051,030
197113 16% 0.01367
197214 12% 0.01498
197315 19% 0.02523
19745 5% 0.03178
197524 16% 0.04621
197616 10% 0.02523
197720 14% 0.04625
197836 20% 0.01913
197915 28%1 0.04406
198015 14% 0.02445
198132 10% 0.071,015
198221 11% 0.04532
198347 14% 0.071,712
198474 24%1 0.093,072
198512 8% 0.10473
198611 7% 0.05332
198712 8% 0.08372
198839 12%1 0.091,399
198931 14% 0.071,101
199027 11% 0.09874
19971 10% 0.0026
199841 16% 0.041,794
199983 20%1 0.045,441
200017 8%1 0.07863
200124 10%1 0.071,172
200212 6% 0.07408
20058 12% 0.08376
20061 3% 0.0035
20076 10% 0.08236
200810 4% 0.03233
20096 11%1 0.13215
20104 2% 0.06155
20114 3% 0.14214
201230 11%1 0.071,165
2013209 34%44 0.165,276
201458 14%2 0.071,639
201546 10% 0.041,471
2016108 13% 0.034,110
201767 9% 0.041,929
201856 8% 0.041,653
201970 9%2 0.051,953
202042 8% 0.041,509
202159 9% 0.011,788
202271 12% 0.032,691
202387 16%1 0.042,946
202490 15%1 0.043,646
202590 14% 0.044,589
202663 12% 0.033,324

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.