Water supply and quality

How much of the council's recorded discussion was about water supply and quality, 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.
1,200items on this topic
599meetings
9.1%share of discussion (era average)
23contentious items
13divided votes

A recurring struggle: contentious items in 6 decades (1960s: 2, 1970s: 1, 1980s: 7, 2000s: 2, 2010s: 10, 2020s: 1).

Items per year

YearItemsShare of the year's items ContentiousMean contentionWords
19623 10% 0.12284
19632 3% 0.15254
19647 8% 0.121,527
196512 14% 0.141,404
19667 9% 0.12562
19679 16% 0.12747
196832 26%1 0.123,491
196935 19%1 0.102,065
197052 29% 0.103,385
197116 20% 0.07927
197226 22%1 0.091,748
197312 15% 0.07660
197410 10% 0.10504
19758 5% 0.12571
197620 12% 0.091,270
197713 9% 0.07636
197812 7% 0.03449
19792 4% 0.0047
19809 8%1 0.15469
198125 8%1 0.111,463
198214 8% 0.13977
198339 12% 0.102,323
198441 13%2 0.143,535
198513 9%2 0.141,218
198618 11% 0.081,107
198714 9% 0.05866
198817 5% 0.111,037
198928 12%1 0.112,499
199029 12% 0.091,803
19971 10% 0.0050
19988 3% 0.10482
19998 2% 0.09512
20005 2% 0.08319
200113 6% 0.151,413
200211 6% 0.08520
20064 10%2 0.30642
20079 14% 0.09466
200833 12% 0.041,164
20092 4% 0.0765
201030 13% 0.01214
201112 9%1 0.05165
201231 12%2 0.122,145
201335 6%5 0.172,524
201438 9%1 0.092,264
201531 7% 0.041,245
201623 3% 0.05873
201745 6% 0.031,372
201829 4% 0.04796
201932 4%1 0.061,250
202010 2% 0.03358
202150 8% 0.042,208
202227 5% 0.031,010
202333 6% 0.031,117
202446 8% 0.031,319
202560 10% 0.021,955
202649 9%1 0.03986

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.