Starting today, the forum has something that I have been working toward since day one: searchable council meeting minutes. You can find it at the top of the Village Council category in a button labeled “Council Minutes”, or go directly to: Gates Mills Community Forum.
Type a few words. Get instant results showing the exact document and page. You can download the entire minutes, view the full PDF directly in the page, or quick preview just that specific page. No more hunting through documents or trying to remember which meeting something was discussed in.
The forum exists to make village government accessible. Council minutes have always been public. Now they’re actually usable. Whether you’re trying to verify something you heard, researching a topic before a meeting, or just want to stay informed about what’s been discussed, this tool makes it simple.
This search engine is somewhere between an alpha and a beta. There are detailed instructions on the page (it’s very straightforward). Please hold feedback until Friday when it should be more polished. I want to get a few more improvements in before gathering input.
Important note: I haven’t even opened this on a mobile phone yet and I’m sure it’s terrible on there. It’s on my list! Please try it on a computer for now.
The technology behind this search will power other document galleries across the forum. I’m hoping to roll out a couple more file gallery searches this week.
This is what the forum was built for: making it easier for all of us to stay informed and engaged with how our village operates.
John, I just skimmed the “Council Minutes” in the Village Council category. It is a leap forward in enhancing the user experience. Being cautious, I would like to hear about the testing/verification of the search function.
In the meantime, congratulatlons on this effort to meet a community need.
That made my night! Well, let’s see… I asked the product manager, John, to create it, and he worked with the developer (also shockingly named John) to build it. After it was done, John the QA guy typed in a query and said, “Yup, looks good!”
But seriously, text searching and indexing has been around for decades. I’m using PostgreSQL’s built-in, industry-class algorithms (think Fortune 500 companies). My secret sauce was in the presentation - I minimized it to just the essentials.
I made the results VERY predictable: not AI-based, not algorithm-based, nothing like that. It’s just “show me where this is in the documents”. Nothing more, nothing less. It handles smart things like recognizing “1” and “one” as the same, but otherwise keeps it simple and straightforward. It’s actually quite old-school, and I think we need more of that. If I were to use Google’s algorithm for search, the first 50 results would be ads!
Thanks for your effort on this, John, it will be a real time saver and thanks for the Forum
Along the lines of transparency and resident input, the Village website does not make it easy to find agendas and minutes for Council meetings and for the various other committees, such as Planning and Zoning, etc. It is often too late to have input by the time something is decided. One example is that only contiguous property owners are notified of a variance that will be discussed though the variance might significantly impact those just one property away from contiguous. Would it be possible to create email listserves that will send out agendas (ahead of time) and minutes of village committees to those residents who sign up to receive them?
Yes! And easily. I spent a ton of time making the search generic so that I could just point it at a pile of PDFs. As long as they are public, all I need to know is where those files are and I can point the engine at them. If you (or anyone reading) can point me to where Planning and Zoning agendas/minutes are posted on the village website, I can add a search engine button for them. Same for any other committee documents that are public.
I was so pleased with my “old school” approach. “Look for the word or phrase and tell me the pages”. It’s straightforward and understandable. I plan on adding a slider for narrowing in the date ranges for files where the date is actually relevant (meeting minutes, etc.).
By the way, thanks for posting and your kind words. It means a lot!
