Parks, recreation and library

How much of the council's recorded discussion was about parks, recreation and library, 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.
1,038items on this topic
462meetings
5.1%share of discussion (era average)
17contentious items
14divided votes

A recurring struggle: contentious items in 4 decades (1980s: 1, 2000s: 1, 2010s: 10, 2020s: 5).

Items per year

YearItemsShare of the year's items ContentiousMean contentionWords
19641 1% 0.0033
19651 1% 0.1026
19671 2% 0.1031
19682 2% 0.0796
19691 1% 0.14101
19703 2% 0.09213
19712 2% 0.0898
19721 1% 0.0652
19731 1% 0.1758
19746 6% 0.07302
19756 4% 0.13366
19767 4% 0.06327
197710 7% 0.02358
19788 4% 0.07418
19811 0% 0.2356
19824 2% 0.20382
19836 2%1 0.21460
19843 1% 0.10212
198510 7% 0.09754
19861 1% 0.0539
19874 3% 0.11175
19881 0% 0.0025
19897 3% 0.08451
19905 2% 0.04333
19985 2% 0.05225
199913 3% 0.07865
20003 1% 0.10138
200113 6%1 0.13827
200211 6% 0.06865
20053 4% 0.10158
20071 2% 0.23215
200833 12% 0.03597
20094 8% 0.06308
201050 21%1 0.021,448
201133 24% 0.031,318
201223 9% 0.081,787
201320 3%4 0.18958
201427 7%2 0.121,708
201517 4% 0.101,241
201665 8%1 0.063,193
201759 8% 0.072,457
201863 8%1 0.062,815
201959 8%1 0.083,256
202061 11% 0.052,580
202158 9%1 0.041,673
202259 10% 0.031,613
202347 9%1 0.051,340
202467 11% 0.042,247
202579 13%1 0.042,349
202673 14%2 0.062,537

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.