Methodology

Eunomia uses AI, but disciplined AI — held to four standards you can see on every page:

• Authoritative sources. Nothing is asserted that isn't tied to an official record. Every summary and extracted claim links the meeting minutes, decision, or video it came from.
• Traceable evidence. You can follow any conclusion back to the exact document it came from — verbatim quotes, the archived original we ingested, and a public log of every correction.
• Transparent reasoning. The system shows how it reached a conclusion and how sure it is: the model and date behind each summary, confidence levels, and version history when a summary changes.
• Interfaces that help people understand. The record is legible and honest about change and uncertainty — conservative language when evidence is incomplete, draft-versus-approved and amendment notes, and sourced timelines.

Eunomia tracks the published agendas and minutes of the Commission and its boards, authorities, and commissions — as posted on the municipality's agendas & minutes page. It does not capture closed sessions, deliberations that never reach a written record, or bodies that don't post there. The absence of an item here is not evidence that nothing happened; a body may not have met, or its document may not be posted yet.

Sources are ingested on a schedule, so the record can lag the newest meeting. Meeting minutes are also a draft until the governing body approves them at a following meeting, and can be amended.

For reporters, Eunomia surfaces story leads— a dated, sourced feed of what changed in the record. Leads are generated by fixed rules over structured data (no AI judgment), and each links to its source. The labels describe what the record shows; they do not grade anyone's conduct:

• New ordinance introduced / Contract approved / Budget line increased — a recorded decision of that kind.
• Vote split changed — the recorded roll-call on a matter differs from a prior vote on it.
• Open follow-up, no closing action — a follow-up item was opened and the record shows no later closing action. It is not a claim that a promise was broken.
• Referred at multiple meetings — the same issue was referred at two or more meetings with no recorded decision. “Referred,” not “delayed.”
• Reported by multiple residents — a concern was submitted by several residents (root plus merged duplicates).
• Elevated public comment — a meeting drew an unusually high number of public comments relative to the norm. A statistical signal to look, not a conclusion.

Residency is confirmed by email plus a geographic check: the address you provide is geocoded and tested against the municipal boundary. This confirms an address is in the municipality — it is a reasonable signal, not proof that a specific person lives there. Verified residents can support issues; unverified voices are still heard but counted separately.

As a soft anti-abuse signal, we also check whether your sign-up appears to come from the area. If your address is in-boundary but your connection resolves to somewhere clearly far away (which can also happen on a VPN or while traveling), we hold verification as pending rather than auto-approving — you can confirm instantly by re-submitting from your home internet. This signal never permanently blocks anyone.

Each verified resident may support an issue once. Support counts reflect distinct verified residents, not raw clicks. Duplicate submissions can be merged by staff so support for the same underlying concern isn't fragmented.

An organizer can also add a neighbor's support on their behalf — for people they signed up in person who agreed to be listed. This support is verified by address like any other, but it is recorded with its provenance (“added by an organizer”), shown distinctly from self-registered support, and the neighbor receives a one-click email to confirm or remove themselves. That keeps organizer-gathered support transparent and never conflated with support people registered directly.

• Public — shown with your name and ward. By default you're identified by name (as at a council meeting); you can reduce to first-name-only per matter, and your name is never searchable.
• Verified, anonymous — counted in every total and in your ward, but your name is not shown publicly.
• Private / not public — visible only to authorized Eunomia reviewers. Municipal staff see private submissions only if the municipality formally participates in Eunomia, or if you separately submit through official municipal channels.

Two things are kept distinct. The public record — official meeting minutes and decisions — is reported completely: anyone the minutes name (officials, appointees, applicants, whoever moved or seconded a motion) is named clearly in our summaries. Eunomia does not redact the public record; if a name is in the official minutes, it is public. Separately, on Eunomia itself you control your own identity: your submissions and support can appear by name (the default, like giving your name at a council meeting), by first name only, anonymously, or privately. That is a choice about your participation here — it never changes what the municipality's public record already says. Sensitive redactions to the official record are the municipality's responsibility; if a name in the record is wrong, use the correction channel.

Plain-language summaries are generated by an AI model from public documents and are a convenience, not the official record — they can be wrong, and the source is always linked. Each summary records which model produced it and when. If the source document is amended, or a summary is regenerated, the earlier version is kept — a published summary is never silently rewritten. Where minutes are still a draft (not yet approved by the body), the page says so.

We publish an accuracy report: every rebuild re-checks whether each extracted claim's cited quote still appears verbatim in its source (citation integrity), shown alongside the count of logged corrections. The record measures itself rather than asking to be trusted.

Ward and category breakdowns only appear once at least five residents are represented in a group. Smaller groups are combined so no individual can be inferred from a public chart. Support-by-area maps use the same five-person threshold.

An issue's public timeline is assembled from the record: when it was submitted and supported, when it was discussed at a meeting, when an official action addressing it appears in the minutes, and when it was resolved — each step dated and linked to its source. Where a step has not happened, the record states that neutrally — for example, “no official response has been recorded yet.” (Separately, staff/admin actions are written to a hash-chained audit log; that chain is verified by an administrator, and is distinct from the public timeline.)

Anyone can flag any item — including the machine-extracted ones — with “Request a correction” or “Flag this item.” Eunomia is autonomous, with no staff reviewer, so flagging runs an automatic re-check against the source: for an extracted item we re-test its cited quote against the source minutes, and if the citation no longer holds the item is removed automatically. Anything the machine can't auto-check is marked “Flagged” and logged; Eunomia does not adjudicate interpretation, and the municipality's official minutes remain the authoritative record. Every flag and its outcome is published in the corrections log. Full policy on the corrections page.

Eunomia is built and operated by base2ML, an independent software studio. It is nonpartisan and not affiliated with any candidate, party, or the municipal government.

Eunomia is currently a self-funded pilot, free to residents. It accepts no advertising and no funding from politically-interested parties. Any future grant or sponsor support will be disclosed here.