Public safety (police, fire, emergency)

How much of the council's recorded discussion was about public safety (police, fire, emergency), 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.
877items on this topic
475meetings
4.8%share of discussion (era average)
9contentious items
5divided votes

A recurring struggle: contentious items in 4 decades (1980s: 1, 2000s: 1, 2010s: 2, 2020s: 5).

Items per year

YearItemsShare of the year's items ContentiousMean contentionWords
19622 7% 0.0778
19632 3% 0.0696
19641 1% 0.0261
19661 1% 0.16133
19672 3% 0.17135
19685 4% 0.13280
19695 3% 0.12382
19704 2% 0.11283
19715 6% 0.09248
19723 2% 0.06211
19744 4% 0.04154
197510 7% 0.081,130
19766 4% 0.03333
19775 3% 0.05200
197810 5% 0.11431
19793 6% 0.04109
198011 10% 0.12706
198115 5%1 0.10874
198210 5% 0.09746
19836 2% 0.11301
198417 5% 0.05841
198519 13% 0.051,319
198611 7% 0.03548
198720 13% 0.021,010
198821 7% 0.031,362
198923 10% 0.071,808
199012 5% 0.03575
19972 20% 0.09116
199816 6% 0.041,229
199918 4% 0.041,424
200016 8% 0.071,430
200117 7% 0.041,287
200216 9% 0.041,333
20052 3% 0.04170
200610 26%1 0.121,849
20072 3% 0.20381
20088 3% 0.01159
20091 2% 0.07289
20104 2% 0.0070
20117 5% 0.0064
201214 5%1 0.111,173
201319 3%1 0.121,441
20146 1% 0.08379
20157 2% 0.08338
201612 1% 0.05624
201711 1% 0.05435
201826 3% 0.04645
201921 3% 0.01401
202020 4% 0.03384
202170 11%1 0.073,188
202236 6%1 0.07910
202350 9%1 0.061,858
202474 12% 0.031,800
202591 14%1 0.042,454
202668 13%1 0.041,741

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.