About

Richmond Commons pulls Richmond's city government data into one place and makes it understandable. Meeting agendas, votes, and official actions are translated into plain language so any resident can follow what's happening at City Hall without reading hundreds of pages of government documents.

Local journalism covering Richmond has declined significantly — over 2,500 newspapers have closed nationwide since 2005. Richmond Commons helps fill the gap by making the information that's already public genuinely accessible.

• Not adversarial. This is a governance assistant, not a “gotcha” tool. Accountability is a byproduct of transparency, not the goal.
• Not advocacy. We present factual, citation-backed information. No opinion, no editorial, no recommendations on how to vote.
• Not social media. Data comes from official government sources and regulated campaign finance filings, not social media or rumors.

1. Collect official documents: We download agendas, minutes, staff reports, and attachments from Richmond's official meeting portals.
2. Extract structured data: Documents are parsed to pull out agenda items, motions, votes, and key details.
3. Generate plain-language summaries: Each agenda item gets a short description of what happened and why it matters, written at a level anyone can understand.
4. Show council context: Council member profiles include voting records and campaign finance data from public filings, so you can see the full picture.

All data comes from official government sources and regulated public filings.

• Auto-generated summaries are not 100% accurate. We validate against known patterns and improve continuously, but errors are possible. Official documents are always linked as the primary source.
• Campaign finance data has a lag. State filings may be weeks or months behind. Local filings are more current but only cover filings since 2018.
• Meeting data depends on what the city publishes. If a document isn't posted to the official portal, it won't appear here.
• This project is not affiliated with the City of Richmond. It is an independent civic technology initiative.

This project is in active development. If you spot an error, have a correction, or want to share feedback, there are two ways to reach us:

Richmond Commons is free and will always be free. If you find it useful and want to help keep it running, you can support the project on Ko-fi.

100% of contributions go toward hosting, data infrastructure, and API costs.