Methodology
How OpenCalifornia sources, transcribes, enriches, and indexes public meeting records.
What we hold for San Mateo
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
- 160
- Bodies covered
- 61
- Earliest record
- January 8, 2026
- Latest meeting
- November 2, 2026
Minutes are published on the body's own schedule, often weeks after the meeting.
39 published motions. A decision can only be extracted where minutes exist.
Next scheduled meeting on record: November 4, 2026.
Known source problems
- November 2, 2026 · City Council Regular Meeting — Video: live event has not started yet
- October 26, 2026 · Library Board Regular Meeting — No content available for enrichment (empty transcript + no agenda/minutes)
- July 20, 2026 · City Council Special Meeting — Skipped: mostly silent: 1.5h of 1.6h (post-trim) is silence (94%), only 0.1h speech
Bodies covered (61)
2026 Candidate Briefing · Appointment Subcommittee to the Civic Arts Commission · Appointment Subcommittee to the Historical Resources Commission · Appointment Subcommittee to the Measure S Oversight Committee · Appointment Subcommittee to the Mosquito & Vector Control District · Appointment Subcommittee to the Park and Recreation Commission · Appointment Subcommittee to the Personnel Board · Appointment Subcommittee to the Senior Advisory Commission · CANCELLED - Civic Arts Commission Regular Meeting · CANCELLED - Community Relations Commission Regular Meeting · CANCELLED - Library Board Regular Meeting · CANCELLED - Measure S Oversight Committee Regular Meeting · CANCELLED - Park and Recreation Commission Regular Meeting · CANCELLED - Park and Recreation Commission Special Meeting · CANCELLED - Personnel Board Meeting · CANCELLED - Personnel Board Regular Meeting · CANCELLED - Planning Commission Regular Meeting · CANCELLED - San Mateo - Foster City Public Financing Authority · CANCELLED - Senior Advisory Commission Regular Meeting · CANCELLED - Sustainability and Infrastructure Commission · CANCELLED - Sustainability and Infrastructure Commission Meeting · CANCELLED - Sustainability and Infrastructure Commission Regular Meeting · CANCELLED - Sustainability and Infrastructure Regular Commission Meeting · CANCELLED-Park and Recreation Commission Regular Meeting · Cancelled - Measure S Regular Meeting · City Council - Audit Committee Special Meeting · City Council - Special Meeting · City Council - Special Meeting - Park and Recreation Appointment Subcommittee · City Council Legislative Committee · City Council Legislative Committee Special Meeting · City Council Regular Meeting · City Council Special Meeting · City Council Special Meeting (State of the City) · City Council Special Meeting of Multiagency Significance · City Council Special Meeting: Public Employee Evaluation · Civic Arts Commission Regular Meeting · Civic Arts Commission Regular meeting · Civic Arts Commission Special Meeting · Community Relations Commission Appointment Subcommittee · Community Relations Commission Regular Meeting · Legislative Committee Meeting · Library Board Appointment Subcommittee · Library Board Regular Meeting · Library Board Special Meeting · Measure S Oversight Committee Special Meeting · Park and Recreation Commission Meeting · Park and Recreation Commission Regular Meeting · Park and Recreation Regular Meeting · Park and Recreation Special Meeting · Parks and Recreation Regular Meeting · Personnel Board Special Meeting · Planning Commission Regular Meeting · Planning Commission Special Meeting · San Mateo-Foster City Public Financing Authority Regular Meeting · Senior Advisory Commission Regular Meeting · Senior Advisory Commission Special Meeting · Sustainability and Infrastructure Commission · Sustainability and Infrastructure Commission - Special Meeting · Sustainability and Infrastructure Commission Meeting · Sustainability and Infrastructure Commission Regular Meeting · Sustainability and Infrastructure Special Meeting
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.