How this works
An independent project, not an official City of Champaign site. The City's documents are the official record, and every vote here links to the page of the minutes it came from.
Where the data comes from
- Votes are read automatically from the official minutes of Regular and Special Council meetings, published on the City's Council Documents page. Bill links go to the bill PDFs the City publishes.
- From 2026 on, the City posts documents in a SharePoint folder whose direct links require a sign-in, so this site serves unaltered copies of those PDFs.
- Each bill's "What it does" text, and any amount or company, is copied from the City's own report to Council. It isn't written or checked independently. It's left blank when the wording doesn't clearly state it, and scanned bills can't be read. Search covers bill text the same way.
- Election results come from the Champaign County Clerk. Elected terms start the May after an April election. Results before 2007 exist only as scanned files and aren't transcribed yet.
- Meeting videos come from CGTV, the City's government channel, and are available from August 2024 on. Jumps to a bill use the chapter marks City staff add, so a few may be off or missing.
- Agendas for upcoming meetings come from the City's posted agendas, usually the Friday before a meeting. The site updates nightly.
How votes are counted
- When the minutes say "all voted yes," every member recorded present is counted as yes. Late arrivals, departures and returns noted in the minutes are accounted for.
- Some minutes give only a tally (for example "6 ayes, 1 nay") without saying who dissented. Those votes are shown as not recorded rather than guessed.
- A dissent is a vote against the side that prevailed. Attendance is the share of meetings with votes, while the member served, that they attended.
- Some bills need more than a simple majority, for example when a formal protest is filed. Those show how many yes votes were needed.
How it was checked
- Every meeting's votes were checked against the minutes a second time by a separately written program. The records it couldn't confirm, about 400, were read individually.
- The minutes occasionally print the wrong bill number. Where a bill's title clearly matches a different bill file, the corrected number is used and the bill is flagged.
- Where the minutes are incomplete or contradict themselves (an outcome that doesn't match the recorded vote, or a vote with no members named), the bill carries a flag so readers can check the source.
What isn't included
- Coverage starts in 2002. A few meetings' minutes are missing from the City's archive (for example, April and December 2005), so bills decided at those meetings don't appear.
- Study-session polls, voice votes on routine items (minutes, payroll, vouchers) and procedural motions such as amendments aren't included.