Utilities, franchises and solid waste

How much of the council's recorded discussion was about utilities, franchises and solid waste, 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.
320items on this topic
213meetings
3.0%share of discussion (era average)
11contentious items
4divided votes

A recurring struggle: contentious items in 6 decades (1960s: 1, 1970s: 1, 1980s: 2, 1990s: 3, 2010s: 2, 2020s: 2).

Items per year

YearItemsShare of the year's items ContentiousMean contentionWords
19631 1% 0.0761
19641 1% 0.0539
19652 2% 0.0182
19662 3% 0.06101
19671 2% 0.1156
19683 2% 0.09494
196910 6%1 0.13750
19705 3% 0.14230
19713 4% 0.08254
19723 2% 0.07147
19739 11% 0.14434
19742 2% 0.1878
19754 3% 0.11289
19769 5%1 0.08419
197711 7% 0.10582
19789 5% 0.05576
19801 1% 0.0052
19816 2% 0.06446
19821 1% 0.1162
19835 2% 0.07460
19847 2% 0.14558
198510 7% 0.062,456
19865 3% 0.15320
19873 2% 0.10206
198821 7%1 0.141,981
19898 4%1 0.101,751
199016 7%2 0.161,710
19971 10% 0.1541
19982 1% 0.15171
199914 3%1 0.101,029
20006 3% 0.05355
20015 2% 0.101,265
20021 1% 0.1034
20071 2% 0.16128
20086 2% 0.0034
20092 4% 0.06165
20101 0% 0.006
20124 1% 0.08312
20138 1% 0.03336
20147 2%1 0.14325
20154 1% 0.06162
20165 1% 0.06231
20171 0% 0.0647
201835 5% 0.072,068
201917 2%1 0.06767
202017 3% 0.071,345
202116 3%1 0.071,216
20222 0% 0.0068
20241 0% 0.0364
20251 0% 0.0041
20265 1%1 0.21391

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.