Sewer and wastewater

How much of the council's recorded discussion was about sewer and wastewater, 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.
605items on this topic
374meetings
5.5%share of discussion (era average)
10contentious items
5divided votes

A recurring struggle: contentious items in 5 decades (1970s: 1, 1980s: 4, 1990s: 1, 2000s: 1, 2010s: 3).

Items per year

YearItemsShare of the year's items ContentiousMean contentionWords
19621 3% 0.15121
196315 22% 0.121,837
196414 15% 0.131,651
196528 33% 0.072,384
196615 19% 0.10930
19676 10% 0.08412
196810 8% 0.06493
19699 5% 0.04542
197012 7% 0.07597
19714 5% 0.08246
197219 16% 0.141,354
19733 4% 0.12199
19749 9%1 0.19759
19753 2% 0.07138
197613 8% 0.09870
19777 5% 0.10226
19783 2% 0.02129
19791 2% 0.2521
19801 1% 0.0540
19819 3%1 0.20463
19825 3% 0.09266
198320 6% 0.09940
19848 3% 0.10446
198510 7%2 0.15668
198625 16% 0.091,516
19873 2% 0.11170
198822 7%1 0.111,443
19895 2% 0.08283
199013 5%1 0.111,093
19984 2% 0.12355
199923 6% 0.041,519
200010 5% 0.07767
20015 2% 0.07255
20022 1% 0.10165
20062 5%1 0.42285
20072 3% 0.08101
20087 3% 0.02135
20091 2% 0.07165
20102 1% 0.0012
20114 3% 0.0019
20125 2% 0.05315
201312 2%1 0.11565
201425 6%2 0.172,516
201514 3% 0.061,463
201658 7% 0.043,965
201726 3% 0.031,158
201827 4% 0.041,035
201923 3% 0.03731
20209 2% 0.05403
20217 1% 0.01169
202211 2% 0.04491
202319 3% 0.091,010
20247 1% 0.00194
20254 1% 0.08207
20263 1% 0.0081

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.