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Council VoteTracker

A searchable, plain-language record of how the Suisun City Council voted across roughly three and a half years of meetings.

Website management
Record / by topicn = 350
Illustration · 350 cells = 350 recorded votes, grouped into topic bands. Not actual vote data.
Context
SuisunInFocus
Year
2026
Disciplines
Web, Data, Communications
Role
Research and data entry
  • 350+Council votes recorded
  • 80+Meetings reviewed
  • 3.5Years covered (approx.)
§ 1

The challenge

Council decisions are public, but they live inside long PDF minutes written in procedural language. To find out how a council member voted on housing, policing or the budget, a resident has to know which meeting to open and how to read it.

The information was available. It was not usable.

§ 2

What I did

I read the minutes from more than 80 meetings and recorded each vote as its own entry: what was decided, in a sentence a resident can follow, how each member voted, and a link back to the official minutes.

I then organized the record by topic so a reader can start from a subject they care about rather than a meeting date.

§ 3

How it works

Every entry pairs a plain-language summary with the official source. The summary helps people understand; the link lets them check.

  • 01One vote, one entry: summary, outcome, member-by-member votes
  • 02Topic grouping for browsing; search for specific items
  • 03A direct link to the official minutes on every entry
  • 04Corrections made in the open when an entry is wrong
Anatomy of one vote entryIllustration — not live client work
01
Topic
e.g. Public safety
02
Meeting
Date of the council meeting
03
What was decided
One plain-language sentence describing the item
04
Outcome
Passed / failed, with the tally
05
How each member voted
Member-by-member: yes, no, abstain, absent
06
Source
Link to the official minutes
§ 4

The result

The record now covers 350+ votes. SuisunInFocus data was used in a Suisun City Council vote about police funding and was picked up by local news.

Explore SuisunInFocus ↗ (opens suisuninfocus.com in a new tab)
§ 5

Methods, limitations & lessons

Plain-language summaries are interpretations, so the official minutes remain the authority and are always one click away. Coverage spans about 3.5 years; earlier votes are not yet included.

The main lesson: the source link is not a footnote. It is what makes a simplified summary trustworthy.

What I owned

  • Research and data entry
  • Plain-language writing
  • Information architecture
  • Site design and build
  • Corrections policy