The Data Dashboard is a searchable database of votes taken by the City Council during regular and special meetings. The dashboard has votes from meetings going as far back as 2018. Votes from new meetings are added in a timely manner.
Data Tables
The Data Dashboard organizes information into various tables. These tables contain things such as meetings, reports, and votes via their associated agenda items.
General Information Tables
Keeping track of votes necessitates tracking the context of those votes. The following tables provide that context.
- Councillors: City councillors both sitting and previous
- Sessions: Council sessions and which councillors were in them
- Meetings: Regular and special city council meetings
- Awaiting Reports: Passed policy orders awaiting responses from the city
Agenda Item Tables
Every vote is associated with an agenda item from a council meeting. Agenda items are grouped into tables based on their type as designated by the city. These agenda item types are available via
- Policy Orders
- City Manager’s Agenda (CMA)
- Applications and Petitions
- Resolutions
- Ordinances
The Layout
The Data Dashboard is laid out in a grid, like a spread sheet, with multiple tables each with a named tab. The tables for agenda items are named after the type of item.
Layout Details of an Agenda Item Table
- Agenda Item Type: The name of the table and what type of data it contains
- Agenda Item Row: Rows represent a single agenda item
- Data Type: Column headers tell you what type of information is in that column
The first column contains a unique identifier composed of a three letter prefix representing the item type, the year the item was filed, and an index. The index tracks the number of items of a given type filed that year.
To see additional information, you can expand some cells by clicking on the arrows in its top right corner. Some columns are links to other tables. For example as seen above, the column that tallies “yea” votes are linked to the Councillor table. Expanding that cell shows a summary about each councillor who voted “yea”, and you can click on a councillor to see more info about them.
Views
Alternative views of the same data can be selected from the menu on the left. The default view for every table is a grid with all of the entires. A different view of the same table may have a predefined filter or sorting order. For example, the default view of the “Policy Orders” table is “Policy Orders – All”. The view “Policy Orders – Active” only shows entries for the current council session.
A view may also display data in a visually different way. The view that is the most different is the default view for the Councillors table. This view can be used to quickly get an overview of the votes of a particular city councillor.
