Methodology

Where every number comes from

No figure appears on this site without a source document in the registry. The registry renders at Sources, and every data table carries its own source line naming the document it rests on.

Every document is archived locally at the moment of citation, with the retrieval date recorded, because municipal PDFs move and get revised in place. Primary documents beat reporting: where a number exists only in news coverage, the site says so or leaves it out. Certified election figures were transcribed by eye from the certificates (several PDFs have no usable text layer) and re-checked against the document before publication.

Unknown is not zero

A figure that was not published renders as "not available". It is never shown as 0 and never silently omitted.

The site does not derive what it cannot source. Ballots cast are never computed from turnout multiplied by electorate; a levy share is never computed from an incomplete year; a capital figure with an unknown basis gets a null and a note rather than a guess. One deliberate exception runs in the safe direction and is labelled on the page where it happens: the 2022 electorate, derived from the certificate's own count and percentage.

Comparability

Budget line items get renamed between years, so any multi-year series carries mapping notes saying how each year's printed label was assigned. A "project cost" can mean total cost, city share, or construction only; every capital figure carries its basis.

Different definitions are different series. The City and the County count encampments differently, and the two counts never share an axis. The same applies to city versus CMA population figures, and to permits versus starts versus completions. A methodology change draws a series break on the chart, because a methodology change looks exactly like a real trend.

Elections data

The results archive covers 2003–2022. Every year except 2003 is transcribed from the certified declaration; 2003 comes from an unofficial source, is marked as such, and is excluded from derived figures.

People are matched across elections by a hand-maintained registry rather than by name-matching, with every merge recorded and checkable. Incumbency is derived from the certificates rather than from who is well known.

Candidates

The candidate list is transcribed from the City's published list, with the transcription date shown. Until the Clerk certifies the list on August 24, nothing on it is final, and single-candidate races are not called acclamations. A candidate who has not filed is never described as not running.

The questionnaire

Before any responses are published, this page will state the rules in full: who received the questionnaire, when, and at what addresses; the equal-treatment rules (the same questions for every candidate in a race, verbatim publication, the same word cap for everyone); and how non-response is displayed. The rules go up before the answers so they cannot be shaped by them.

What candidates have said

Candidate statements on the issue pages and profiles are verbatim passages copied from an archived copy of their source, never paraphrased by this site, and never labelled for or against. Sources are campaign websites, indexed news coverage, and the candidates' own social media posts; each passage names its source, links to it, and shows the date the copy was taken. A passage from news coverage says whether it is the candidate quoted, the reporter's reported speech, or the reporter's characterisation, and is attributed to the outlet. Passages are short and capped; the article is the record.

Fairness is structural: every candidate in a race is read the same way, from the same kinds of source, and a race is shown only once every candidate in it has been checked. A candidate with nothing located on an issue is listed as such with the date we checked, because absence is a finding and never a blank. Statements are gathered in a dated research batch and reviewed by hand before publication; a build check proves every published passage appears in its archived source, and a passage that fails that check cannot publish. A statement is removed only if it is not verbatim or is misattributed; a candidate who changes position gets a newer passage added, not an older one deleted, and every change is logged at updates and corrections.

Council votes: selection criteria

Only recorded votes can be shown, and much of council's business passes on consent without one. Before any vote appears on the site, this page will publish the rule for which votes are selected, so absence from the table cannot be read as absence of a position.

Who runs this site, and corrections

The About page discloses who runs the site, how it is funded, and its independence rules. Errors are corrected on the page where they appear, and every correction is logged in full at Corrections: what was wrong, what it says now, when it changed, and who flagged it. Nothing is silently edited.