Method and sources

Editorial standard (draft for review)

• Every entry is a record (what an official document shows), an attributed statement (what a named person or body said, with where and when), or an access pointer (where to find, attend or request the record).
• Plain-language explanation is welcome when each claim points to a passage in an official document. Comparing a proposal's text with the current text is explanation; guessing why someone proposed it is not.
• No motives, predictions, ratings, characterizations or accusations. A contract increase or a changed figure is reported as a change, not as evidence of anything else.
• Discussion, proposal, committee action, council action, passage and the date a rule takes effect are kept apart, using only dates the records give.
• A document that was not found is described as "not located in the sources checked", with the sources listed. A source that failed to load is a collection failure, never "nothing changed".
• Figures are labeled proposed, adopted, amended, projected or actual, by year and fund, with the page they come from.
• Questions from readers are treated as questions. Leads are checked against original sources before anything is reported.
• Corrections are logged publicly with the date and the source.

How the City's records are collected

A monitor reads the City of Aurora's legislative system (Legistar) through its public data interface: meetings from three weeks back to two months ahead, each meeting's agenda items and attachments, and each piece of legislation's history and published text. Every response is kept with its retrieval time and SHA-256 hash. Agenda and minutes documents are kept by content hash, so a revised agenda is kept as a new version. Each check is compared with the previous one, and the changes are listed.

Verification log

Other sources

• Governments serving Aurora, officeholders and election results: official county clerk canvasses, the Illinois State Board of Elections, board minutes and rosters, county tax-code reports, county parcel data and 2020 Census block data, each cited in its entry.
• Which school and congressional districts have Aurora residents in each county: the Census Bureau's 2020 block assignment files, its 118th Congress block equivalency file and 2020 block counts (2,178 City of Aurora blocks).
• Rights: the statutes cited in each entry. Every entry was re-checked against the law in force on October 29, 2026. The General Assembly's website refuses automated requests and its file repository's statute folder dates from November 24, 2025, so the text in force was rebuilt from that folder and the 2025-26 Public Acts in the repository, and 18 sections were compared word for word with the website.

Spot-check

On October 29, 2026, a random sample of 52 records was checked against the original sources by reviewers who did not compile them: 38 matched, 5 partly matched and 9 had a value that differs from the source. Every record with a value that differs was corrected or withdrawn, and each change is logged under Corrections below. Every record checked, and what was found.

Known limits

• Legislation titles come from the City's data interface and match the titles on agendas and minutes. When legislation has more than one version, the City's legislation page can show the title from a version's text instead; the spot-check found this for file 26-0566.
• Several committee agendas list only headings in the City's system; their business is in the agenda document, which the monitor keeps but does not yet read.
• Meeting recordings are not indexed or transcribed by the monitor.
• Effective dates are shown only where the published text states them.
• Topic labels come from words in official titles and can miss items.
• Monitoring covers the City of Aurora only. The other governments' records are checked by research passes, with the dates given in each entry.

Corrections

• Oct 29, 2026 Privacy page: since the site's first update through the host's API, Tiiny Host no longer adds its interface script. It adds an analytics script (Plausible, from analytics.tiiny.net) to every page and link-preview tags that show its logo to the home page; the page now lists only these, with the date they were checked. This site's pages as delivered by the host, checked October 29, 2026
• Oct 29, 2026 Privacy page: the host, Tiiny Host, adds two scripts of its own to every page when it delivers it (an analytics script, Plausible, from analytics.tiiny.net, and its interface script from assets.tiiny.xyz) and link-preview tags that show its logo. The page had said the pages load nothing from other sites; it now says what the host adds. This site's home page as delivered by the host, checked October 29, 2026
• Oct 29, 2026 Rights guide: every entry was re-checked against the law in force on October 29, 2026, sentence by sentence, and then checked again independently. All 26 published entries were corrected, and the six withdrawn after the spot-check are restored. Statements now keep the conditions and the "shall" or "may" of the sections they cite; text that no source states, such as practical tips, was removed; and the changes made by P.A. 104-438 (effective January 1, 2026) are reflected, among them who counts as a requester, the rule that an electronic request must be in the body of the message, and website posting of FOIA information. The ten request templates, the instructions for asking the Public Access Counselor for review, and five form names were corrected as well. Illinois General Assembly · Freedom of Information Act, Section 3, current text
• Oct 29, 2026 Rights guide: six entries are withdrawn until they are re-checked against the current statute text: the Illinois FOIA exemptions (Section 7) and lawsuits and penalties; the Open Meetings Act right to record and public comment; campaign disclosure reports; and federal FOIA timing and fees. A spot-check found statements in each that differ from, or are not in, the sections cited. The guide's statute copies came from the General Assembly's file repository, whose copy of FOIA Section 7 was out of date. Illinois General Assembly · 5 ILCS 140/7, current text
• Oct 29, 2026 Council votes since 2015: links to the City's legislation pages did not open, because they used the data interface's record number, which those pages do not accept. They now go through the City's gateway address, which opens the right page. City of Aurora legislative system · legislation search
• Oct 29, 2026 Budget figures F254 and F255 (2027 proposed budget, capital project sheets I062 and A061): the page references now give the printed page numbers, 1001 and 926. F254 had recorded no amount; that is true of the carryover sentence only, and the same sheet lists a 2027 project cost of 250,000, from Water & Sewer (90,000) and Grant-State (160,000). City of Aurora · 2027 Proposed Budget
• Oct 29, 2026 What a school district does: a sentence said "Board members are elected" as a general statement drawn from one district's page. It now gives that page's statement as East Aurora School District 131's example. East Aurora School District 131 · Board of Education
• Oct 28, 2026 Indian Prairie School District 204, April 7, 2015 board election: the DuPage figures had been labeled unofficial because only DuPage's results site, headed 'Unofficial Results', had been found. An Internet Archive copy of the DuPage County Election Commission's Canvass of Votes (printed April 24, 2015) has the same figures, so the contest now shows a complete official count and the candidates with the most votes. DuPage County Election Commission · Canvass of Votes, April 7, 2015 (Internet Archive copy)
• Oct 27, 2026 At-large recall question: the signature shortfall is now shown as 198 (at most 2,907 valid signatures against a minimum of 3,105), the figure in Electoral Board decision 26-MOEB-02. A relationship entry had said 240. Aurora Municipal Officers Electoral Board · Decision 26-MOEB-02
• Oct 27, 2026 The atlas now follows a record-only standard. Removed: computed council agreement scores, summaries grouping council members by voting pattern, relationships derived from voting patterns or labeled only by characterization, and the public list of open research questions. Profiles and relationship labels were rewritten as records and attributed statements.