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Salt Tab.evidence-first civic information
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    TransparencyImplementation

    Meeting decoder

    A one-page, plain-language breakdown of each meeting: what was on the agenda, what changed, who voted how, and the source documents.

    The problem

    Local meetings are where a lot of consequential decisions actually happen — budgets, zoning, contracts — yet the record is buried in long agendas, PDFs, and video nobody watches.

    “Public” is not the same as “knowable.” Without a reader-facing layer, transparency exists on paper but not in practice.

    How it works

    1. 1
      Agenda in plain language

      Each item categorized by type — ordinance, budget, zoning, contract — so a reader can scan what a meeting was actually about.

    2. 2
      Proposed vs. final

      The decoder flags the gap between what was proposed and what actually passed, including spending changes.

    3. 3
      Who voted how

      Roll-call votes and links to the source documents, so any summary is one click from the record.

    The data behind it

    The ingestion adapters and government-meeting pages already collect the raw material — agendas, items, and votes; the decoder is the reader-facing summary layer on top.

    Figures are proposal/modeled estimates, validated against real data as the plan runs — not claims from Salt Tab’s evidence pipeline.

    What we want your input on

    • How much to summarize versus quote directly from the record?
    • How to surface the gap between what was proposed and what passed without editorializing?
    This is being built out. It exists to start a conversation — to be sharpened, challenged, or moved toward implementation. Reach out to weigh in or help build it.