Methodology
How OpenIllinois sources, transcribes, enriches, and indexes public meeting records.
What we hold for Evanston
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
- 115
- Bodies covered
- 38
- Earliest record
- February 2, 2026
- Latest meeting
- November 2, 2026
Minutes are published on the body's own schedule, often weeks after the meeting.
168 published motions. A decision can only be extracted where minutes exist.
Next scheduled meeting on record: November 4, 2026.
Known source problems
- October 22, 2026 · Environment Board — No recording found within the 7-day media watch
- October 22, 2026 · ADA Advisory Committee — No recording found within the 7-day media watch
- October 21, 2026 · M/W/D/EBE Development Committee — No recording found within the 7-day media watch
- October 21, 2026 · Healthy Buildings Technical Committee — No recording found within the 7-day media watch
- October 20, 2026 · Housing & Community Development Committee — No recording found within the 7-day media watch
- October 20, 2026 · Evanston Arts Council — No recording found within the 7-day media watch
- October 16, 2026 · Utilities Commission — No recording found within the 7-day media watch
- October 16, 2026 · Healthy Buildings Accountability Board — No recording found within the 7-day media watch
- October 15, 2026 · Parks and Recreation Board — No recording found within the 7-day media watch
- October 14, 2026 · Preservation Commission — No recording found within the 7-day media watch
Bodies covered (38)
911 - Emergency Telephone System Board · ADA Advisory Committee · Administration & Public Works Committee · Animal Welfare Board · Board of Local Improvements · CARP Implementation Task Force · Citizen Police Review Commission · City Council · City-School Liaison Committee · Commission on Aging and Disabilities · Dementia Friendly Subcommittee · Draft 2025 Consolidated Annual Performance Evaluation Report · Economic Development Committee · Environment Board · Equity and Empowerment Commission · Evanston Arts Council · Finance and Budget Committee · Five-Fifths TIF Advisory Committee · Healthy Buildings Accountability Board · Healthy Buildings Technical Committee · Housing & Community Development Committee · Human Services Committee · Land Use Commission · Lighthouse Landing Complex Committee · Liquor Control Review Board · M/W/D/EBE Development Committee · Northwestern University-City Committee · Parks and Recreation Board · Planning & Development Committee · Preservation Commission · Public Safety Civil Service Commission · Referrals Committee · Reparations Committee · Rules Committee · Ryan Field Community Advisory Council · Social Services Committee · Special City Council Meeting · Utilities Commission
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.