Why I Started Transcribing Monterey Park City Council Meetings

The Meeting

In December 2025, I sat through a Monterey Park city council meeting that ran five hours long.

I walked into a packed Monterey Park City Council Chamber. I was there to oppose the building of a datacenter down the street from my house, but I felt like a lost lamb, not knowing how any of this city council stuff works. I think it was the Assistant City Manager, Diana Garcia, who saw me staring at the comment cards for a bit too long, and kindly welcomed me and helped me through submitting one.

A nice surprise! When finding a seat, I found my neighbors, and took a seat with them, first in a broken chair (a number of people after me tried to sit in that broken chair).

They got to the data center issue fast, and my neighbors, and most everyone went home after that in the first half hour. Being skeptical, I thought I would commit to sitting through the whole meeting to make sure we didn't get hoodwinked. Boy was that a mistake. The meeting took five hours.

The Problem

Beyond developing a profound respect for the civil servants who sit through these meetings twice a month, I realized it's a pain in the ass to be actively involved in local politics. If a five-hour meeting is what it takes to stay informed, most people just won't.

The Idea

The next thought was: make it better. I'd seen products like Fathom summarize work meetings, and wondered if similar technology could make it easier to keep track of city council meetings. There are already minutes and summaries posted publicly, but they're often too dry, hard to read, and miss context.

What We Built (So Far)

We've spent the better part of this year on this, and are closing in on an initial prototype to help people stay on top of their interests and see what's happening at city hall. It takes public data (video and documents) and summarizes it into something easier to follow. Take a look here: city-council-transcripts.vercel.app (and remind us to get a better domain name).

What's Next

Still refining the process.

I'd love any feedback (good, bad, whatever) — there's an email button in the footer below.