Recognition and ceremonies

How much of the council's recorded discussion was about recognition and ceremonies, 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.
343items on this topic
310meetings
0.5%share of discussion (era average)
3contentious items
2divided votes

Items per year

YearItemsShare of the year's items ContentiousMean contentionWords
19693 2% 0.12277
19741 1% 0.1155
19782 1% 0.0359
19812 1% 0.0375
19842 1% 0.15320
19861 1% 0.1275
19892 1% 0.1061
19981 0% 0.1270
19992 0% 0.09224
20103 1% 0.04136
20113 2% 0.0032
20122 1% 0.19150
20136 1%2 0.27248
20142 0%1 0.30114
20157 2% 0.02303
201629 4% 0.00172
201725 3% 0.01175
201828 4% 0.00158
201929 4% 0.0098
202032 6% 0.01190
202132 5% 0.00100
202225 4% 0.0076
202326 5% 0.00131
202427 4% 0.00121
202528 4% 0.00106
202623 4% 0.01206

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.