Methodology
How OpenWisconsin sources, transcribes, enriches, and indexes public meeting records.
What we hold for Milwaukee
These are coverage figures — how much of the public record we have published. They are not an accuracy measure, and we do not currently publish one.
- Meetings
- 438
- Bodies covered
- 50
- Earliest record
- January 5, 2026
- Latest meeting
- November 2, 2026
Minutes are published on the body's own schedule, often weeks after the meeting.
2,576 published motions. A decision can only be extracted where minutes exist.
Next scheduled meeting on record: November 4, 2026.
Known source problems
- October 23, 2026 · CITIZEN ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON THE NAMING OF PUBLIC BUILDINGS, FACILITIES AND STREETS — No recording found within the 7-day media watch
- October 22, 2026 · TRAVAUX INC. BOARD OF DIRECTORS — No recording found within the 7-day media watch
- September 1, 2026 · COMMON COUNCIL — YouTube: Quota cooldown until 2026-11-02T07:22:32.789Z — channel at 100/100 uploads in 24h
- August 19, 2026 · HOUSING AUTHORITY — YouTube: channel not verified — uploads over 15 minutes wait for phone verification
- August 17, 2026 · CITY PLAN COMMISSION — YouTube: channel not verified — uploads over 15 minutes wait for phone verification
- August 14, 2026 · ADMINISTRATIVE REVIEW BOARD OF APPEALS — YouTube: channel not verified — uploads over 15 minutes wait for phone verification
- August 3, 2026 · HISTORIC PRESERVATION COMMISSION — YouTube: channel not verified — uploads over 15 minutes wait for phone verification
- July 31, 2026 · COMMON COUNCIL — YouTube: channel not verified — uploads over 15 minutes wait for phone verification
- July 29, 2026 · FINANCE & PERSONNEL COMMITTEE — YouTube: Quota cooldown until 2026-11-02T03:53:11.266Z — channel at 100/100 uploads in 24h
- July 28, 2026 · ZONING, NEIGHBORHOODS & DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE — YouTube: channel not verified — uploads over 15 minutes wait for phone verification
Bodies covered (50)
ADMINISTRATIVE REVIEW BOARD OF APPEALS · ANTI-ILLEGAL DUMPING POLICY AND RESEARCH COMMITTEE · BOARD OF CITY SERVICE COMMISSIONERS · BOARD OF ELECTION COMMISSIONERS · BOARD OF HEALTH · BRONZEVILLE ADVISORY COMMITTEE · CHARTER SCHOOL REVIEW COMMITTEE · CITIZEN ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON THE NAMING OF PUBLIC BUILDINGS, FACILITIES AND STREETS · CITY HALL CAMPUS EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS COMMITTEE · CITY INFORMATION MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE · CITY PLAN COMMISSION · CITY-COUNTY ADVISORY BOARD ON CLIMATE AND ECONOMIC EQUITY · COMMON COUNCIL · COMMUNITY & ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE · COMMUNITY COLLABORATIVE COMMISSION · COMMUNITY COLLABORATIVE COMMISSION - COMMUNITY OUTREACH · EMERGING YOUTH ACHIEVEMENT ADVISORY COUNCIL · EQUAL RIGHTS COMMISSION · ETHICS BOARD · FINANCE & PERSONNEL COMMITTEE · FIRE AND POLICE COMMISSION · FPC OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY COMMITTEE · GRANVILLE-HAVENWOODS ADVISORY COUNCIL · HISTORIC PRESERVATION COMMISSION · HOUSING AUTHORITY · HOUSING AUTHORITY EXECUTIVE SEARCH COMMITTEE · JOINT COMMITTEE ON REDEVELOPMENT OF ABANDONED AND FORECLOSED HOMES · JUDICIARY & LEGISLATION COMMITTEE · LICENSES COMMITTEE · MILWAUKEE ARTS BOARD · MILWAUKEE ARTS BOARD PUBLIC ART SUBCOMMITTEE · MKE COMMUNITY IMPACT COMMITTEE · MKE Community Impact Commitee Rulebook & Online Organization Workgroup · MKE Community Impact Committee Community Building & Outreach Workgroup · NEIGHBORHOOD IMPROVEMENT DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION · PEDESTRIAN AND BICYCLE ADVISORY COMMITTEE · PUBLIC DEBT COMMISSION · PUBLIC SAFETY AND HEALTH COMMITTEE · PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION, UTILITIES, AND WATERWAYS REVIEW BOARD · PUBLIC WORKS COMMITTEE · REDEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY · SAFETY AND CIVIC COMMISSION · SISTER CITIES COMMITTEE · STEERING & RULES COMMITTEE · TEFRA HEARING · TRAVAUX INC. BOARD OF DIRECTORS · VEL R PHILLIPS TRAILBLAZER AWARD SELECTION COMMITTEE · YOUTH COUNCIL · ZONING CODE TECHNICAL COMMITTEE · ZONING, NEIGHBORHOODS & DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
Where the records come from
We pull official meeting videos from city platforms — Granicus, CivicPlus, PrimeGov, Swagit, and YouTube — once per city per day. Agendas come from the city's public agenda system. Nothing is republished without an official source.
How transcription works
Every meeting is transcribed with word-level timestamps, then enriched with AI to extract decisions, agenda items, public comments, and civic issues. Transcripts may contain errors; video and original audio remain the authoritative source.
How search works
Search is hybrid — keyword matching plus vector similarity — inside Meilisearch. Results are real records (meetings, agenda items, dev applications). The summaries on each result card were produced during enrichment and are reviewed periodically. Written answers come only from the assistant, described next.
How the assistant answers questions
The “Ask about” assistant answers plain-English questions from the same records search uses: agendas, minutes, transcripts, recorded decisions and development applications. It does not answer from general knowledge about your city. It is free with a sign-in.
Every statement in an answer links to the meeting it came from, so you can open the agenda, minutes or the moment in the video and check it yourself. When the records do not cover a question, it says so instead of guessing.
It keeps a recommendation separate from a decision. A planning commission that votes to recommend denial has not denied anything; the council decides next, and the answer says which body acted and which body acts next.
Known limits. Until a body approves its minutes, a vote may be known only from the recording; answers label those votes as recording-based. Not every meeting has a transcript or minutes yet, and coverage differs by city (see the coverage figures at the top of this page). Like the summaries, answers can contain errors.
Before a change to the assistant ships, we rerun a fixed set of real residents' questions with checked answers and compare the results. Passing that set does not guarantee every answer is right, which is why every answer shows its sources.
AI limitations
AI summaries can contain errors. Always verify legal actions, vote counts, and named-person attributions against the official video, transcript, and minutes. Where records are incomplete, we mark the gap rather than guess.
Corrections
Spotted a problem? Email corrections@opencityrecord.org with a link to the page and a description of the issue. We review every correction and update the affected record.