Methodology
How OpenTexas sources, transcribes, enriches, and indexes public meeting records.
What we hold for Garland
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
- 372
- Bodies covered
- 51
- Earliest record
- January 5, 2026
- Latest meeting
- October 31, 2026
Minutes are published on the body's own schedule, often weeks after the meeting.
384 published motions. A decision can only be extracted where minutes exist.
Next scheduled meeting on record: November 2, 2026.
Known source problems
- October 27, 2026 · Garland Youth Council — Swagit: meeting not archived (no recording available)
- October 27, 2026 · Development Services Committee — No content available for enrichment (empty transcript + no agenda/minutes)
- October 22, 2026 · General — No recording found within the 7-day media watch
- October 21, 2026 · Board of Adjustment — No content available for enrichment (empty transcript + no agenda/minutes)
- October 20, 2026 · Transportation Infrastructure & Mobility Committee — No content available for enrichment (empty transcript + no agenda/minutes)
- October 17, 2026 · General — No recording found within the 7-day media watch
- October 16, 2026 · General — No recording found within the 7-day media watch
- October 15, 2026 · General — No recording found within the 7-day media watch
- October 13, 2026 · General — No recording found within the 7-day media watch
- October 6, 2026 · Development Services Committee — No content available for enrichment (empty transcript + no agenda/minutes)
Bodies covered (51)
Administrative Services Committee · All Abilities Committee · Animal Services Advisory Committee · Audit Committee · Audit Committee Meeting · Board of Adjustment · Budget Workshop · City Council · Citywide Town Hall · Civil Service Commission · Community Multicultural Commission · Community Multicultural Commission 25th Anniversary Subcommittee Meeting · Community Services Committee · Cultural Arts Commission · Dart & Garland Community Meeting · Development Services Committee · Development Services Committee Meeting · Eastern Hills Mission Hills Round Table Discussion · Environmental & Community Advisory Board · Environmental And Community Advisory Board Meeting · Fire & Ems Stakeholder Committee · Garland District 2 Town Hall Meeting · Garland District 3 Town Hall Meeting · Garland District 4 Town Hall Meeting · Garland District 5 Town Hall Meeting · Garland District 7 Town Hall Meeting · Garland Youth Council · General · Legislative & Public Affairs Committee Meeting · Legislative Affairs Committee · Library Board · Library Board Meeting · Parks And Recreation Advisory Board · Parks and Recreation Advisory Board · Plan Commission · Property Standards Board · Public Facilities Corporation · Public Safety Committee · Senior Citizens Advisory Commission · Special City Council · Special Work Session · Tax Increment Finance Board #3 · Tax Increment Finance Downtown/Forest Jupiter Board · Tax Increment Finance South Board · Tax Increment Finance South Board Meeting · Tax Increment Financing Boards - #3 · Transportation Infrastructure & Mobility Committee · Transportation Infrastructure & Mobility Committee Meeting · Unified Building Standards Commission · Work Session · Work Session (Audio Description)
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.