The Prince Edward County Record

How this record is made

Everything here comes from Prince Edward County's own published agendas and minutes. Nothing is summarised from memory and nothing is inferred.

Why it exists

Prince Edward County publishes its agendas and minutes, and that is not the same as publishing a record. What council decided sits inside individual PDFs, one meeting at a time, with no way to ask who moved what, who was absent, or what happened to a file across four years. This reads those same documents every day and puts the answers on one page each.

4,032 motions across 394 council meetings are on this site, each linked back to the minutes it was read from.

What it will not do

It does not rank councillors, score them, or tell you who is doing a good job. Counts of motions moved and meetings attended are facts about the record, not measures of a person, and they are published with their denominators so nobody has to take a bare number on trust. Procedural and substantive motions are counted apart and never added together.

The rule the whole thing is built on

A figure is published only when it reconciles against the document it came from. A recorded vote is stored only if the names in it match the counts the minutes themselves print; when they do not, the vote is discarded rather than published partially. A motion is attached to a planning file only where the minutes name that file in the motion or its agenda item. Where something cannot be verified, this record says so instead of guessing.

Who runs it

Mike Shoss runs it. It is an independent project with no funding from, and no affiliation with, the Town of Prince Edward County. It is part of a network publishing the same record for municipalities across Ontario, built from one set of code so that every town is held to the same rules.

Where the information comes from

Everything here is assembled from public records Prince Edward County already publishes: its council agendas and minutes, the recorded votes in them, and the planning files those decisions name. Figures are parsed from those documents and checked against the totals the documents themselves state; anything that does not reconcile is withheld rather than shown. The documents themselves are re-read daily; anything that moved appears the same day. If a source stops responding, the page says so rather than quietly showing yesterday’s figures.

What this record does not hold

  • Development applications. This town's planning register has not been read, or its last reading was withheld. (register not read)
  • Who was there. The roll call has been read for fewer of this term's council meetings than the record needs. (roll call read for 60% of 157 council meetings this term)
  • Council members. Not every seat yet has a ward, a portrait and a description drawn from the town's own pages. (14 members; ward 0, portrait 0, bio 0 -- 1 on the roster never seen at a sitting, portrait on 0/14, bio on 0/14)
  • Subscriptions. There is no way to subscribe to this town yet. (subscriptions not built / not on)
  • Individual votes. How each member voted is on this record only where the minutes print a recorded vote, and those have not yet been read for this council. (minutes show recorded votes (62 mention, 1 labelled, 0 roll-call) but none stored)
  • Watching. Fewer of the town's pages are watched for change than the record needs, so 'what changed' may lag. (0 watched surface(s) banked this week (none))
  • Planning file numbers. No file-number scheme has been measured for this town yet, so motions are not linked to applications.
  • Committee meetings. 1,647 of 2,041 meetings in the town's calendar are advisory or committee bodies this record does not yet read.

Accuracy, and how to get something corrected

If something here is wrong, it matters. The source document for every claim is linked from the meeting it came from — start there, then write to [email protected]. Corrections are made within 48 hours of being reported and are listed on the corrections page, not quietly edited away.

Start here

Help keep this record right

Do you know Prince Edward County’s councils — as a resident, a reporter, a former member, a clerk? The record for Prince Edward County is read by software from the minutes and checked against their own totals, and it still needs people who can tell when a page is wrong. Volunteer as a reviewer for Prince Edward County, or read what a reviewer does.