The pitch
Fifteen minutes, not four hours
The Metropolitan Council decides what gets built, what gets funded, and what gets policed in Nashville. It does this in meetings that run past midnight, on agendas with a hundred and sixty items, in language written for the clerk.
Metro Minutes reads all of it and gives you the part that changed something: what passed, what failed, who voted which way, and the timestamp where it was argued. The record stays verbatim. The plain-language part is labeled, sourced, and always one click from the original.
How we handle the truth Product law
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Every AI claim links to its source.
A machine-written sentence is only publishable with a link behind it: a video timestamp, a bill file, or a Legistar action. If a claim cannot be traced, it does not go on the page.
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Voice votes say they are voice votes.
When the council votes by voice, no individual positions are recorded. We label it plainly — “voice vote — individual positions not recorded” — and never guess who was on which side.
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Uncertain speakers stay “Unknown speaker.”
Names are attached to transcript audio only when the speaker is on the dais and the identification is confident. Everything else stays unattributed.
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Public commenters are summarized in aggregate.
Residents who speak at a public meeting are exercising a right, not applying for a search result. We report what was said in aggregate and keep commenter names out of the search index.
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What the model is unsure about is printed too.
Every summary is written from the transcript and the action record, then challenged by a second pass hunting for claims the transcript does not support. Its caveats and its findings ship with the summary, under “What the AI is unsure about” — a failed check is flagged, not quietly fixed.
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The record and the summary never look alike.
Official record and AI summary carry different type, different color, and different labels on every page — plus a way to report an error when we get one wrong.
Official record
Serif type, a struck margin rule, wording copied exactly from Legistar. This is the government's own account of what it did.
AI summary — check the source
Cool ink, a hatched edge, and a list of sources. Written by a model. Useful, faster to read, and capable of being wrong.
Where the data comes from Public records
- Legistar
Agendas, minutes, actions, roll-call votes, bill text and sponsors.
- Metro Nashville video
Meeting recordings. Timestamp links point back into the official player.
- nashville.gov
Council member contact information and district pages.
- Council district boundaries
The published GeoJSON of the 35 council districts, used for the map.
Records are pulled on a schedule, stored, and republished here with links back to the original. Where a summary or a transcript exists, it is generated from the public recording of a public meeting.
Independent, and saying so
Metro Minutes is an independent project. It is not affiliated with the Metropolitan Government of Nashville & Davidson County, the Metropolitan Council, or any council member, campaign or committee. Nothing here is an official record. When it matters, go to nashville.legistar.com — and we will always link you there.
Found something wrong?
Corrections are the whole job. Send the page, the item, and what is wrong with it.