Elizabeth Burns-Thompson

Former Council Member, Altoona, Iowa.

Never voted no in 798 decisions they voted on, in the minutes we have (2020-2023).

How these profiles are built: methodology, assumptions, and limitations

Methodology

Mayor and Council: the City's Mayor & Council page (biographies, term dates), plus the named roll calls and votes in retained Council minutes.
City officials: every name listed under City Officials Present in the retained Council minutes (January 2020 through September 2026). The title comes from a City staff page where the City publishes one; otherwise it is the title printed beside the name in the minutes.
Police: the roster and text pages of the department's self-published 2025 annual report.
Minutes record: a remark counts when the minutes attribute it to a named official with a speech verb ("stated", "explained"). Mentions come from a full-name search of every retained minutes document that tolerates OCR spacing and includes listed alternate spellings. For police, a rank plus a surname also counts (for example, "Officer Hulen").
Photos: official City photos or editor-supplied official portraits, hosted on this site.

The same printed name in different minutes is treated as the same person. Editor-confirmed spelling and OCR corrections are listed on the Council presence record. Ambiguous names stay separate (for example, Dan Manning and Dan Manning Sr.).
A title printed beside a name describes that person at that meeting only. A Department Head Reports line shows the department the person reported for, not their job title.
A match on rank plus surname may refer to someone else, so it is labeled on the profile.
The police roster is current as of the 2025 annual report, not necessarily today.

Coverage is limited to retained minutes. A few minutes documents the City posted are scans, so mentions in them may be less complete. Some meetings have no retained minutes. If a person is not mentioned, that does not mean they were absent or uninvolved.
Minutes paraphrase what was said; they are not transcripts, and text extraction can introduce errors. Each entry links to the source page so you can check it.
The annual report is the department's own account and is not independently verified.
Profiles are not a current roster and are not an employment, salary, discipline, or conduct record.
Private residents do not get profiles. Public-comment speakers without a profile appear as first name and last initial, and home addresses are withheld.
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