{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1", "title": "Deflock Altoona: what's new", "home_page_url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new", "feed_url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new/feed.json", "description": "Dated data fixes, data updates, and new features on Deflock Altoona.", "language": "en-US", "authors": [ { "name": "Deflock Altoona" } ], "items": [ { "id": "2026-10-04-votes-business-spellings-grouped", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-04-votes-business-spellings-grouped", "title": "One business, one card, with every spelling the minutes print", "content_text": "The business cards on Votes used to split one company across several cards because the minutes print its name different ways. Spellings that differ only in capitalization, punctuation or an abbreviation now share a card. A card can also group different legal forms, but only where the minutes print the same projects under each spelling: Jackson Creek Enterprises, printed five ways across 2016 to 2024 (plain, Inc., L.C., a typo and a fragment), is one card of 30 votes. Each card lists the exact spellings with counts and dates and says why they were grouped. The minutes do not say whether Inc. and L.C. are one company, so the card says that too. A different legal form never groups on its own.", "date_published": "2026-10-04T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "council", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-04-story-comments", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-04-story-comments", "title": "Comment on a story: read by the editor before anything shows", "content_text": "Each story page has a Comments section with a short form. A comment appears right away under the display name the reader picks, with no account and no outside service. The editor is alerted to each one and can hide it; a comment containing a link, email address or phone number is held until the editor approves it.", "date_published": "2026-10-04T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "news" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-04-roundup-surveillance-capital", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-04-roundup-surveillance-capital", "title": "The surveillance-capital page: the question, the City's own words, and the neighbors beside Altoona", "content_text": "The page behind the masthead question now holds the record it can stand on: Altoona's portal figures and rates, the City's own account of the program, and every nearby city's portal count with a size-adjusted neighbor rate, each with what it cannot show. The measures table leads with the community-mapped count inside the city limits, with the vendors' portal figures labeled as one vendor's.\n\nIncludes: The surveillance-capital page opens with the City's own words; The surveillance-capital table leads with the cameras residents have mapped; Surveillance-capital page: every nearby city's portal count, a size-adjusted neighbor rate and per-camera rates; The masthead question now has a page: \"The surveillance capital of Iowa?\".", "date_published": "2026-10-04T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-04-roundup-reading-and-footer", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-04-roundup-reading-and-footer", "title": "Easier to read at the end of a page: reading guides, the page history line and footer links", "content_text": "Three same-day changes to how a page reads. Every \"how to read it\" guide now shows the mark it explains, a swatch, ramp, line or dot, beside a bold term and its meaning, with limits set apart by an open amber ring. The \"this page has changed N times\" line and its sparkline moved up beside the page feedback row, above the footer. The footer's column headings open their section's main page. And each section's main page now opens with a card for every page under it.\n\nIncludes: Footer column headings now open their section's main page; A Home card in every page's footer; The \"this page has changed N times\" line now sits beside the page feedback row, above the footer; Every \"how to read it\" guide now shows the mark it explains next to its meaning; Each section's main page now opens with cards for every page under it.", "date_published": "2026-10-04T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "council", "local", "news", "site" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-04-roundup-news-stories", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-04-roundup-news-stories", "title": "Two Flock stories now say what they mean for Altoona", "content_text": "A new story covers a Virginia police employee charged with misusing Flock and sets Virginia's deletion and audit rules beside what Altoona's own pages state. The September analysis of Altoona's place in the Flock sharing snapshot gained a \"Why it matters in Altoona\" section and now says plainly which way the sharing runs: its 232 is other portals naming Altoona as a recipient, not Altoona's own outgoing sharing.\n\nIncludes: The Flock sharing story gains \"Why it matters in Altoona\"; News: a Virginia police employee charged with misusing Flock, and how Altoona's posted rules compare.", "date_published": "2026-10-04T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "news" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-04-roundup-camera-tools", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-04-roundup-camera-tools", "title": "Camera check and coverage map: more detail, a longer slider, two separate tools", "content_text": "The camera check now opens with the nearest mapped camera and the four nearest, adds how far each 5% of Altoona sits from one, and a heat map of nearest-camera distance against cameras in range. The coverage map is its own page again, with a preview on the home page, and its distance slider now reaches five miles.\n\nIncludes: Camera check: how close the nearest camera is, against how many are in range; Camera check: the nearest camera and the four nearest mapped cameras now lead the result; Camera check shows how far each 5% of Altoona sits from a mapped camera; The coverage map is its own page again, with a preview on the home page; The coverage map's distance slider now reaches five miles, with twelve marked distances.", "date_published": "2026-10-04T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "maps" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-04-roundup-4-0-coat-of-paint", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-04-roundup-4-0-coat-of-paint", "title": "4.0: one coat of paint on every page", "content_text": "Every page now reads its type sizes, spacing, corners and row shading from one shared set, so the site looks and behaves the same from the Council record to the camera tools. Settings has a Density choice: Comfortable, or Compact to fit more rows and figures on the screen. Figures too small to show, missing or still pending are printed in words, and every table and tile that loads from a feed shows a loading and an error state. The three ALPR tools share one layout: a tool row, the answer first, then one Settings card with the same control names on each. The design page shows each shared piece in every state.\n\nIncludes: 4.0 coat: /local, /pay, /police and /council read their sizes from the shared tokens; Census tiles and numbers tables use the shared pieces; 4.0 coat: /sources, /records-requests, /news and /whats-new read their sizes from the shared tokens; loading and empty states use the shared boxes; 4.0 coat, page pass 3: the Votes page body reads the shared tokens; Camera check and heat map read the shared type, spacing and density tokens; 4.0 look pass: /about and the generated meeting and person pages read the shared tokens; 4.0 coat: /people and the /votes profile cards read the shared tokens; ALPR tracker: inline styles read the shared tokens; The ALPR tracker joins the camera check's layout: a tool row, the answer first, and one Settings card.", "date_published": "2026-10-04T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "about", "alpr", "council", "local", "maps", "news", "pay", "people", "police", "records-requests", "site", "sources", "votes", "whats-new" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-04-outside-report-cited-not-checked", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-04-outside-report-cited-not-checked", "title": "An outside report's findings now sit beside the records they concern", "content_text": "Where another outlet's reporting on Altoona's plate readers bears on a record, the page now says what the outlet reported, cites its report with date and link, and shows the posted record's own wording beside it, without ruling on which is right. Added to Records requests (contracts, audit policy, sharing network, a new retention-schedule note), the Police page, and the ALPR tracker's statements and approvals sections. The Sourcebook entry now says the report is cited, not re-verified, and that its figures never enter a count or chart.", "date_published": "2026-10-04T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "records" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-04-flock-portal-reading", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-04-flock-portal-reading", "title": "Flock's portal for Altoona, read October 4: 580,997 vehicles detected, 208 searches, 8,242 hotlist hits", "content_text": "A new reading of Altoona PD's Flock transparency portal (page dated October 4, 2026) replaces the October 2 reading on the tracker, the homepage and the usage figures. Against October 2: vehicles detected in 30 days rose from 567,797 to 580,997, searches in 30 days fell from 222 to 208, and hotlist hits in 30 days fell from 8,263 to 8,242. The portal still lists 51 cameras and 30-day retention, and its policy wording (acceptable use, prohibited uses, access, hotlist policy) is word for word the same as in the earlier readings. The figures are the portal's own, provided by Flock Safety, as read in a browser on October 4.", "date_published": "2026-10-04T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-04-feature-council-by-era", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-04-feature-council-by-era", "title": "The council by era: who was named in roll calls in 2014 to 2019 and 2020 on", "content_text": "/council has a new section that sets the two eras of the record side by side: meetings and roll calls in each, the absent share of named positions, and each member named in the era with their first and last roll call, roll calls named, absences and decisions with a nay vote, linked to their profile. The figures come from the roll-call baselines feed, which now carries each member's absent share and dates and the list of members in each era, so the page only formats them. Records before 2020 are thinner; the page says so beside the numbers.", "date_published": "2026-10-04T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "council", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-04-external-reports-simplified", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-04-external-reports-simplified", "title": "Outside reports are now short, credited links", "content_text": "Each outside-report card shows the outlet's headline, outlet and date, a short summary and a link to the report. The per-claim comparison tables against our records are gone: this site links outside reporting for context and does not check each claim.", "date_published": "2026-10-04T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "news" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-04-correction-remarks-cut-short", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-04-correction-remarks-cut-short", "title": "Three 2014-2019 Council remarks no longer cut short by a redaction", "content_text": "Three remarks from 2014-2019 meetings, on a water-line repair, a flood-plain survey and a footing-drain reimbursement, had part of a sentence replaced by the words \"property owner\" while private names were being removed, which cut them short. They now read as the minutes print them, still without residents' full names. The business name Fireside Grille is also restored where it had been shortened. No vote, count or attendance figure changed.", "date_published": "2026-10-04T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "council", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-04-correction-meeting-counts-2015-2019", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-04-correction-meeting-counts-2015-2019", "title": "Two 2014-2019 meeting counts corrected, and five consent-agenda votes named", "content_text": "The 2015 record counted the March 3 agenda as its own regular meeting; the agenda is headed a Monday, March 3 that was a Tuesday, and the minutes approval line calls it the March 2 meeting, so it is the same meeting. The May 21, 2019 session is now an additional session the day after the regular May 20 meeting, not a regular meeting. The record now reads minutes for 22 of 24 regular meetings in 2015 and 24 of 24 in 2019. Five votes that were all titled \"Consent Agenda\" now carry the item they decided, read from the minutes scans.", "date_published": "2026-10-04T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "council", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-04-correction-fact-check-sweep", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-04-correction-fact-check-sweep", "title": "Corrections from a fact check of last night's changes", "content_text": "Several descriptions were wrong or out of date. The coverage map's slider runs from 50 feet to five miles with fourteen marked distances, not 250 feet and twelve, and the option to add or leave out what-if cameras was removed. The camera check shows the nearest camera in feet only when it is under half a mile. The color entry's \"Police and ALPR magenta\" applies to the ALPR tracker, and the Council tone is a slate-blue. Meeting pages now say the Mayor was on the roll call rather than presided unless the minutes show who presided, and Mayor pages count sessions on the roll call, including workshops. Member pages say no votes out of decisions they voted on. A Virginia story and its report card now say an audit found suspicious transactions, and no longer call it a supervisor's audit or say the audit caught it. The ALPR report cards now cite three 2022 camera-count memos, not two. The surveillance-capital page now says detections are events, not people, in its opening sentence. The WeAreIowa story's headline now says what the station reported, in plain words.", "date_published": "2026-10-04T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "council", "people", "news" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-04-color-by-job", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-04-color-by-job", "title": "Color now means one thing at a time: gold is Altoona, status is red, amber, green or blue, and each part of the site has its own tone", "content_text": "Gold used to mark section bars, badges, buttons and the news flags on every page, so a reader could not tell a mark that meant something from one that did not. Now gold marks Altoona only where it sits beside other places. A status reads in its expected color beside its word: Breaking is red, New is green, Updated is blue, a figure the City has not posted yet is amber, an error is red. Section bars, kickers and fold cues take the tone of the part of the site you are in: Council blue, Police and ALPR magenta, Local green, Tools teal, News and the home page the site's dark red. Value scales on maps, tables and charts are unchanged, still green to red or gray from Settings, with every number printed.", "date_published": "2026-10-04T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "site", "alpr", "council", "news" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-04-camera-check-land-use-withdrawn", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-04-camera-check-land-use-withdrawn", "title": "Camera check: land-use view withdrawn", "content_text": "The camera check's land-use view (homes, commercial, industrial and tax-exempt properties on their own) was removed after a privacy review found that, compared with the citywide chart, it could reveal groups of fewer than five properties. The citywide chart and the other charts are unchanged.", "date_published": "2026-10-04T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-03-votes-pulled-consent-items", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-03-votes-pulled-consent-items", "title": "Nine roll calls on items pulled off the consent agenda now carry their own titles", "content_text": "At six meetings the Council pulled a sub-item off the consent agenda and voted on it separately, and the vote tracker filed that separate vote as the consent agenda. Those roll calls now carry the sub-item's own title and a note. The one that changes a count: on Dec. 16, 2024, the 3-2 vote (Evans and Stewart voting nay) was on item 16k, giving notice to withdraw from the BRAVO Greater Des Moines 28E agreement, not on the consent agenda, which then passed 5-0. The others are May 18, 2020 (13h), Nov. 16, 2020 (14b, B8), Feb. 7, 2022 (17t and 17u), Jan. 16, 2023 (14m, the reopened item 7 rezoning, four roll calls) and Nov. 18, 2024 (11L). No tally changed. On Council's cost tables, the yearly counts of agenda items voted on and of unanimous consent-agenda votes move by one to four in 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2024, and the cost per agenda item moves with them.", "date_published": "2026-10-03T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "votes", "council" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-03-votes-meeting-date-links", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-03-votes-meeting-date-links", "title": "Vote dates on /votes open that meeting's page", "content_text": "In the vote table each date links to that meeting's own page, and each day in the tree has an Open this meeting's page link. A day with two sessions links to both.", "date_published": "2026-10-03T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "votes", "council" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-03-tools-menu-camera-tools", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-03-tools-menu-camera-tools", "title": "The camera check and coverage map are in the Tools menu", "content_text": "The site menu's Tools list now includes the camera check and the coverage map, and the two tools and the ALPR tracker link to each other.", "date_published": "2026-10-03T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-03-roundup-telling-the-desk", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-03-roundup-telling-the-desk", "title": "Telling the desk what you think, and following what it finds", "content_text": "The message page opens with six topics, each with a note on what helps the desk most and what happens next, and can carry the page you were reading. The \"Was this page useful?\" row under every page records a Yes or No the moment it is tapped; an optional Add details button then asks what helped or what was missing and links straight to an error report when something looks wrong. Each official now has a feed of their roll-call positions and remarks, linked from their profile, and What's New has one feed per topic.\n\nIncludes: Leave a message: pick a topic, and page feedback asks what helped; Follow one official or one topic in a feed reader; Page feedback counts with one tap.", "date_published": "2026-10-03T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "contact", "council", "feeds", "people", "site" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-03-roundup-screens-and-dark", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-03-roundup-screens-and-dark", "title": "Pages fit every screen better, and dark mode has an AMOLED black option", "content_text": "Pages use the whole width on a phone, every toggle and list link is easy to tap, split and short windows show the page sooner, and wide monitors show more of each chart and table. Settings adds a Dark style choice: AMOLED black sets dark pages on pure black for OLED screens, and the Year choice now also opens the Council roster, a person's remarks and the meetings list on that year. The layout changes alter no figure, label or source. A figure a correction changed now carries a dated \"Corrected\" marker on its tile that opens the correction. The Sourcebook says which pages use each source and what the site takes from it and leaves out, and lists the site's data files for download. On About, the reads-per-day chart can add raw hits from the server's access logs, every page sent to anyone, bots included, and numbered lines mark the days What's New lists items. About's traffic chart can also show a running total since counting began, and About lists the days the public data changed.\n\nIncludes: About lists the days the public data changed; About's hourly reads chart gets the daily chart's markers and running total, and can reach further back; Site traffic adds raw hits per day from the server logs; Site traffic can show a running total since counting began; Reads per day marks the days What's New lists items; Dark mode has an AMOLED black option; The Year setting reaches the roster, remarks and meetings list; Pages fit phones, tablets, split screens and wide monitors better; Download the data from one list on the Sourcebook; The Sourcebook says how each source is used; A figure that a correction changed now says so on its tile.", "date_published": "2026-10-03T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "about", "charts", "council", "people", "site", "sources", "transparency" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-03-roundup-plate-readers-in-court", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-03-roundup-plate-readers-in-court", "title": "New page: plate readers in court, from 1928 to this week", "content_text": "A sortable list of court rulings on whether police use of license plate readers is a Fourth Amendment search, with the Supreme Court location-tracking cases they rest on back to 1928, each checked against the opinion itself and marked when later overruled. A timeline shows every listed ruling at its date, and pointing at a year lists the rulings decided then. A section explains the third-party doctrine, with the site's view labeled analysis and opinion.\n\nIncludes: New page: plate readers in court; Plate readers in court: the rulings on a timeline; Plate readers in court: five more rulings, including Iowa's; Plate readers in court: the Supreme Court cases back to 1928; Plate readers in court: records someone else holds.", "date_published": "2026-10-03T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-03-roundup-oklahoma-flock-ruling", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-03-roundup-oklahoma-flock-ruling", "title": "An Oklahoma federal ruling on a warrantless Flock search, a Virginia misuse charge, story pages and record images", "content_text": "A federal court in Oklahoma ruled on a warrantless Flock search; the site covers it on News, Police and Why, under a breaking band on the homepage. Every story now has its own page, and pages from the police records appear where the site cites them. Two outside reports on a Chesterfield County, Virginia police employee charged with misusing Flock sit on Records requests beside what Altoona's own rules say on audits, retention and warrants. A WeAreIowa TV report dated September 24, on police entering a suspect vehicle's plate into Flock before a burglary arrest, is on News and in the outside reports, newest first, with no one charged and no juvenile named.\n\nIncludes: Outside reports: a Virginia police employee charged with misusing Flock, beside Altoona's own rules; Outside report: TV story on plate readers in a burglary arrest; Homepage: breaking band under the masthead; News: TV report on plate readers in a burglary arrest; News, Police and Why: an Oklahoma federal ruling on a warrantless Flock search; Pages from the police records, shown where the site cites them; News: every story has its own page.", "date_published": "2026-10-03T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "design-system", "homepage", "news", "police", "records", "records-requests" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-03-roundup-new-pages-4-0", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-03-roundup-new-pages-4-0", "title": "Council meetings get a page each and a handout; the ALPR tracker adds its approval steps, statements beside records, officials on the record, and portal wording over time", "content_text": "Every Council meeting now has its own page with attendance, votes, remarks, public comment and any missing records, and the Council meetings page prints a one-page handout for the next meeting with its agenda, how to be heard, each vendor's own plate-reader figures and the last meetings whose records name the cameras. The ALPR tracker gains a Statements and records section that sets what the City's ALPR page and the Flock and Axon portals say about retention, searches, audits and sharing beside the Police Department's Policy 424 and retention schedule, quoted and dated. A second new section, Officials on the record, lists what the Mayor, the police chief and a lieutenant have said about the plate readers, each line with its source. A third, Portal wording over time, quotes the Flock and Axon portals' policy statements from saved copies and dates any change. The tracker now opens with the program's approval steps as the City describes them, each beside what the Council record shows. The tracker also opens with a short explainer for first-time readers. Two new data files go with the records page: counts from the Flock sharing-network export the Police Department released (a configured share is not proof of a search), and the plate-reader outcomes the department's own memos and white papers report, each row quoting its page. Beside the nearby-jurisdictions table, a new section lists how long Altoona and each nearby agency keep plate reads and the uses each lists as prohibited, in its own words. A Selling the data row sets the City's line that its contracts prohibit selling the data beside the 2022 Flock agreement's terms, which never mention selling it and license Flock to use anonymized aggregated data, including for marketing.\n\nIncludes: ALPR tracker opens with how the program was approved; The ALPR tracker shows each nearby agency's retention window and prohibited uses, as posted; ALPR tracker: officials on the record about the plate readers; Plate-reader outcomes the police records report, as a dataset; ALPR tracker: what the City and the plate-reader portals say, beside the department's own records; Statements and records: the City's no-selling line beside the Flock agreement's data terms; How far Altoona's Flock sharing network reaches, counted from the released export; A one-page handout to bring to the next Council meeting; Every Council meeting gets its own page; Each Council meeting has its own address; The Mayor and each Council member have their own profile address; Camera orders on the record: the City page's pilot count sits beside the department's 18; ALPR tracker: what the plate-reader portals say about their policies, and when the wording changes; The ALPR tracker opens with a five-minute explainer.", "date_published": "2026-10-03T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "council", "people", "police", "records", "records-requests", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-03-roundup-mapped-cameras", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-03-roundup-mapped-cameras", "title": "Community-mapped cameras: a camera check, a coverage map, city counts by distance, and a map choice", "content_text": "A new camera check at /alpr/camera-check shows how far the nearest community-mapped plate camera is from your street or a spot you tap, how many are nearby, and how that compares across Altoona, with an Area setting for nearby cities; shares name no street or spot. A coverage map at /alpr/coverage shades how much of Altoona sits farther than a chosen distance from any mapped camera, with what-if cameras a reader can add or remove; positions are sampled to a grid. The tracker's nearby-jurisdictions table now counts, for each city, the mapped cameras within 1, 3 and 10 miles of that city's own limit, its own included, and every map lets readers choose no map, street lines, or OpenStreetMap, and maps, tables and charts that shade a value use green to red or a neutral gray scale instead of gold (the Value colors row in Settings). A camera check result now leads with three numbers, its charts mark where the checked spot falls, and a box on the home page opens it with your street typed in, kept in your browser. The cameras are community-mapped and unverified.\n\nIncludes: How far to the nearest camera? A what-if map; Camera check and civic charts lead with their key number; Camera check leads with three numbers, and the home page has a street box; Camera check adds 50-foot distances and nearby cities; Camera check charts follow your ring and show where your spot falls; Camera check: how close are the mapped cameras to your street?; Street blocks by mapped-camera band, for each precinct and police district; Coverage map: the same share for every nearby city; Coverage map: a smooth distance slider and a heat map; The coverage map is now part of the camera check; Coverage map: a 10-mile view, a metro view, and a lead line for the city table; Sale prices by distance to a mapped camera on /local; Every map: choose no map, street lines, or OpenStreetMap; Maps that shade a value: green to red or neutral, not gold; ALPR tracker: each nearby city's distance columns now measure from that city's own limit; Nearby cities' distance columns now include each city's own mapped cameras; Nearby jurisdictions: each city's mapped cameras by distance from Altoona; Tables and charts shade values in gray, or green to red, instead of gold.", "date_published": "2026-10-03T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "camera-check", "charts", "home", "local", "maps", "site" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-03-roundup-council-records", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-03-roundup-council-records", "title": "Council records reach back to 2014, plus turnout from the scanned minutes and a Nay rate that counts decisions", "content_text": "Coverage and detail drop off before 2020: the City's website no longer posts most minutes from those years, some meetings have no minutes in the City's archive or in web archives, and these records come from archived copies of the minutes rather than from the City's postings at the time. With that said up front on every page that shows them, the votes, attendance, public comment, officials' remarks and meeting list now include 2014 through 2019, each cited to an archived copy of the minutes, and the officials first seen in those years have People profiles. Charts open on all years with the earlier span marked. Pay estimates still start in 2020. Public turnout now covers the eight 2022-23 meetings the City posted as scans, Mayor Pro Tem Boka's labeled reply in the May 1, 2023 public comment is on his record, and each member's Nay rate now counts the decisions they voted on, leaving out approving the agenda, approving minutes and adjourning.\n\nIncludes: Public turnout now covers the eight scanned sets of minutes; Mayor Pro Tem Boka's reply in the May 1, 2023 public comment is now on his record; Council records now reach back to 2014; The Council roster gives every member their seat and roll-call years, 2014 members included; Council and Mayor names show total time on the roll calls instead of a term countdown; The /votes Mayor table shows the Mayor in office for the chosen year; Every Mayor and Council profile opens with a printable record card; Profiles list each 2014\u20132019 seat with its roll-call presence and the meetings that have no minutes; The /people roster charts follow the year range in Settings; The /people table gives a row to each seat, so the Mayor's Council votes count; Year charts from the Council minutes mark the years before 2020; Presence charts shade each seat and join the line across missing minutes; Council records mark long stretches a member was off the roll call; Council and Mayor records show each seat a person held: Council Member, then Mayor; The Nay rate now counts decisions, not every roll call.", "date_published": "2026-10-03T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "council", "people", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-03-court-rulings-read-in-full", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-03-court-rulings-read-in-full", "title": "Plate readers in court: every ruling now checked against its own opinion", "content_text": "The seven rows that rested on another court's description are now checked against the decisions themselves. Two holdings were overstated and are corrected: the August 2025 Northern District of Oklahoma ruling turned first on the defendant lacking standing, with the plate-reader finding only in the alternative, and the January 2026 Eastern District of Oklahoma ruling was a magistrate judge's recommendation about turnpike plate-reader records obtained by subpoena, finding no Fourth Amendment violation. Two rulings were added: the Fifth Circuit's March 2026 decision that the Altoona Police Department cites, and the Eastern District of Virginia's January 2026 summary judgment for the City of Norfolk, now on appeal.", "date_published": "2026-10-03T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-03-community-caveat-per-area", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-03-community-caveat-per-area", "title": "Community-mapped camera note now says where positions and area counts appear", "content_text": "The camera tracker's community-mapped note said locations and per-area counts were not published. Since October 2 the tracker's nearby map shows community-mapped cameras as unlabeled dots, and today the civic districts page added those dots and counts by precinct and police district. The note now says where each appears; the method behind the city total is still not published.", "date_published": "2026-10-03T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "local" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-03-civic-map-community-cameras", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-03-civic-map-community-cameras", "title": "Civic districts: one address box, community-mapped cameras on the map, and counts by precinct", "content_text": "The precinct and police-district map on Find your civic districts can now show the cameras volunteers have mapped on OpenStreetMap, the same unverified dots as the camera tracker's nearby map, behind the same Show community-mapped cameras switch. The dots are drawn over the precinct and police-district outlines, and the address lookup never uses them. The lookup is now one box: type an address the way you would say it, or just a street, and close spellings still match; suggestions show the precinct as you type, and a street on its own lists its blocks with each one's precinct and police district. The page also moved onto the site's black-and-gold accents and its shared figure frame. Below the lookup, two new figures count the map's dots inside each precinct and police district, with each area's share and dots per square mile, so a reader can see which precinct has the most mapped cameras. They count the map's unverified dots, not the tracker's city total.", "date_published": "2026-10-03T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "local", "alpr" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-03-charts-follow-settings", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-03-charts-follow-settings", "title": "Charts follow your Settings, and every chart over time can be cut to the years you want", "content_text": "The Settings menu has a new Charts section: show every chart as a chart or as its data table, and pick the years shown (all years, since 2020, the last 10 or the last 5). Every chart follows those choices until you change that chart; a change you make on one chart is kept for that chart only. Each chart over time has a Years choice of its own, a From and To pair under Options, and, where the records are dated by month or day, a Last 12 months choice and month-by-month From and To. A chart's Options can make its choice your setting for every chart, or forget it and follow Settings again. Downloads hold the years shown.", "date_published": "2026-10-03T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "site", "data" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-03-audience-comment-match", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-03-audience-comment-match", "title": "Public comment counts fixed for 14 meetings in 2023", "content_text": "Fourteen 2023 meetings in Public turnout all showed the same single public-comment speaker and topic, copied from one meeting. Each now shows its own record: 9 of them had a different speaker count (four had no speakers, five had two or three). The 2023 public-comment total and the Council cost per public-comment speaker changed with them.", "date_published": "2026-10-03T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "council", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-03-audience-2026-09-21-count", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-03-audience-2026-09-21-count", "title": "Sept. 21, 2026 audience count corrected to 16", "content_text": "Public turnout showed 15 people named under Audience Present for the Sept. 21, 2026 meeting. The minutes print 16 names, none of them an official, so the count is now 16.", "date_published": "2026-10-03T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "council" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-02-whats-new-roundups", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-02-whats-new-roundups", "title": "What's new folds a busy day into a few roundups", "content_text": "Reader question: what changed, without reading fifty entries for one day? On a day when many related changes shipped at once, What's new now lists a short roundup per theme (the Council page, the ALPR tracker, charts on phones, and so on) with the individual changes folded underneath, each still at its own link. Corrections and reviews are never folded into a roundup; they stay listed one by one. The feeds, site search, and the homepage's What's new column list the roundups, and the Changes over time chart still counts every individual change.", "date_published": "2026-10-02T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "site", "feeds" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-02-sheriff-line-incomplete-fbi-years", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-02-sheriff-line-incomplete-fbi-years", "title": "The Polk County Sheriff's crime-rate line no longer drops to zero in 1991 and 1992", "content_text": "On the violent and property offense rate charts on /local and /alpr/tracker, the dashed Polk County Sheriff's Office line fell to zero in 1991 and nearly zero in 1992. Neither was a real drop. The Sheriff's Office sent the FBI no report for 1991, a year almost no Iowa agency reported, and its 1992 report lists only 1 violent and 4 property offenses for the whole year, against hundreds a year around it. Both years are now a gap in that line with a note saying why. The charts also note that rates divide by the FBI's own population estimate, which for a small city can stay flat for years and then jump. The offense count charts now say that Iowa and the nation are compared with Altoona as rates per 100,000 in the chart above them, since their raw counts are far too large to share an axis with Altoona's. Altoona's own figures did not change. Reader question: why does the Sheriff's line crash around 1991?", "date_published": "2026-10-02T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "local", "alpr", "data" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-02-scanned-minutes-hand-check", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-02-scanned-minutes-hand-check", "title": "Votes from eight scanned sets of Council minutes, re-read from the scans", "content_text": "Eight sets of Council minutes from November 2022 to May 2023 were posted by the City as scanned images with no text. This site had read them by machine text recognition (OCR), which missed some roll calls entirely and dropped marks on others. Every page image has now been re-read with an AI model and each roll call compared with the published record; no person has reviewed this pass. Votes the OCR missed were added, so all eight meetings show every roll call the minutes print. Votes where the OCR had lost a member's yes, the mover or the seconder now match the page, and two votes filed under the wrong agenda item were moved to the right one. Each vote from these meetings now names the page it is on. Motions to deny a request or to put items off carry a note, so a passing vote is not read as approval. In one, the written motion and the marks name different movers, so no mover is listed. Attendance and presiding officers already matched the scans.", "date_published": "2026-10-02T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "votes", "council", "data" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-02-roundup-records-requests-page", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-02-roundup-records-requests-page", "title": "A Records requests page, police annual reports year over year, and fewer, fuller pages", "content_text": "A new page, /records-requests, tracks public-records requests to the Altoona Police Department about its plate-reader program: what each item asked for, what came back, and how long the department took, grouped by topic, with released records posted as redacted copies. It now also holds what the released records show (the former research notebook) and the Iowa records request guide, as four pages were folded into the pages that already covered the same ground. The research notebook carries outside reporting on records other requesters got from the City, labeled as external reports and set beside this site's own records. The Police page adds a year-over-year table of figures the department printed in its 2023, 2024, and 2025 annual reports, each with its report and page. The dated keyword search of every Council agenda and minutes since 2020 now looks for \"Axon\" too, and finds four documents from three meetings: the July 21, 2025 consent agenda that carried the Axon agreement, and public comment on September 8 and 21, 2026. Contracts and invoices adds the eight released Flock invoices by year, billed as printed ($185,750 in all), with the gaps named: a bill is not proof of payment, and the release holds no Axon invoice.\n\nIncludes: What the released Flock invoices bill, year by year; The Council keyword search now looks for \"Axon\" too; Fewer, fuller pages: records, meeting prep, and how the site works; Police annual reports, year over year; Records requests: police records, redacted, with each request's status; Records requests grouped by topic, with the people in the records; What other records requests found, beside our own records.", "date_published": "2026-10-02T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "council", "data", "local", "navigation", "records", "site" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-02-roundup-people-links-previews-and-footer", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-02-roundup-people-links-previews-and-footer", "title": "Officials' names link to their profiles, every page previews itself when shared, the footer lists each page once, and the header gets one Settings menu", "content_text": "Wherever the site names an official who has a People profile, the name now links to it, and each profile lists where that person appears across the site. Every page has its own link-preview card, each profile previews with that person's name and role, and the Cite button on each vote, remark, and released police record hands out a link of its own; four household addresses printed in Council minutes are withheld. The footer lists each page once, a row above it asks whether the page was useful (Yes or No, plus an optional note sent to the site's editor with no name or account attached), grouped like the menus, a menu item that jumps into another page names that page first, and long filter rows on What's new fold behind a More button. In the header, the theme button and View menu are now one Settings button that explains each choice in Display, Data and Map sections (theme, detail, heat coloring, the year Council pages open on, and map defaults), and the floating \"On this page\" button sits beside the ALPR estimate.\n\nIncludes: Long filter rows fold behind a More button; A shorter footer that lists each page once; One Settings menu in the header, and the floating buttons side by side; Menu links to a section of another page name that page; Every page asks whether it was useful; Officials' names link to their profiles, and each profile lists where they appear; Profiles get their own link previews; four household addresses withheld; Settings: Display, Data and Map sections, with map defaults and a reset; Pick the year Council pages open on, in Settings; Shared links now preview the page or record they point to.", "date_published": "2026-10-02T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "council", "design", "navigation", "people", "site", "votes", "whats-new" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-02-roundup-pay-and-votes-pages", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-02-roundup-pay-and-votes-pages", "title": "Public pay rebuilt, and the Votes page's business, presence, public-comment and official-remarks tabs reworked", "content_text": "Public pay is rebuilt on the site's shared figures with a police step ladder. On /votes, Addresses & businesses shows one list at a time under one set of filters, with a chart of property and business matters per year, and Presence lists one row per person with the share of meetings the record documents; open a row for the facts and its chart, and the Public and Others totals now chart by year. Public comment puts what residents said right under the topic chart that filters it, filed by year, month, meeting and item like the Official remarks list. Official remarks opens with four headline figures and a chart of remarks per year by role, browses by year, month, meeting and agenda item, and lists who spoke as one compact row per official. The tabs now share one layout, each in its own color. Deeper tables open on request. The counts are unchanged.\n\nIncludes: Public pay: rebuilt on the site's shared figures, with a police step ladder; Public comment is filed by year, month, meeting and item; Votes: Public comment's participation tables open on request; Votes: Official remarks leads with a chart and browses by year, month and meeting; Votes: Presence lists one row per person; Votes: a cleaner Addresses & businesses tab, with matters per year; Votes: Public comment puts the comments right under the topic chart; Votes: the three record tabs share one layout, each in its own color.", "date_published": "2026-10-02T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "charts", "council", "design", "pay", "site", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-02-roundup-known-cameras-lead-and-nearby-map", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-02-roundup-known-cameras-lead-and-nearby-map", "title": "The tracker and homepage lead with the cameras residents have mapped; the nearby map gains streets and camera points", "content_text": "Because the police department publishes no list of its cameras, the ALPR tracker's How many cameras section and the homepage camera figure now open with the counts volunteers have mapped, labeled community-mapped and unverified, with the vendors' own counts beneath, and a new card on /why says why. The nearby-cities map shows each city's community-mapped count, draws major streets, and marks each camera mapped in OpenStreetMap as of October 2, 2026, with a switch for each layer; its table gains a Distance from Altoona column and, with community-mapped totals on, the ring cards read as running totals within 1, 3, 5 and 10 miles; a new Heat control shades reported agencies by their vendor-reported count. The Flock source card checks each hand reading against Eyes On Flock's copy and says that copy stopped updating after September 23. Two new Flock portal readings, September 30 and October 2, are in. A short note beside the combined 30-day figures, labeled as the site's position, explains why nearly every plate read matching no hotlist matters.\n\nIncludes: Flock portal readings compared with Eyes On Flock's copy; Flock portal readings for September 30 and October 2 added to the ALPR tracker; Maps and tables can shade by value; the Heat control remembers your choice; Homepage: known cameras lead, plus Police, Records requests, and Research tiles; Nearby jurisdictions: how far each city is from Altoona, and running ring totals; The nearby-cities map shows each city's community-mapped count; Streets and community-mapped camera positions on the nearby-cities map; The ALPR tracker now leads with the known cameras residents have mapped; The ALPR tracker says why nearly every plate read matching no hotlist matters; Why we lead with the cameras residents have mapped.", "date_published": "2026-10-02T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "homepage", "pay", "site" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-02-roundup-homepage-countdown-and-agenda", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-02-roundup-homepage-countdown-and-agenda", "title": "Homepage: a countdown to the next Council meeting, its agenda, and links that open the exact record", "content_text": "The next-meeting tile on the homepage, the Local corner's meeting banner, and the meeting cheatsheet now count down to the meeting's start in Altoona time, read Under way once it begins beside this year's average meeting length, and name the first items on the next posted agenda with a card listing every item in the agenda's own wording. The Local corner's recent roll-call list covers the last two meetings that decided something, skipping procedure-only ones. On the homepage, each newest official remark, public-comment line, and story headline opens its own record, and the nameplate follows the domain you arrived on, with a question underneath.\n\nIncludes: Homepage links open the exact remark, speakers, and story; Homepage nameplate follows the domain, with a question underneath; The meeting countdown says when a meeting is under way; A countdown to the next Council meeting; Recent roll-call items cover the last two meetings with business; The next meeting's agenda, on the homepage and the Local corner.", "date_published": "2026-10-02T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "activist", "homepage", "local", "navigation", "site" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-02-roundup-flock-camera-counts-from-the-records", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-02-roundup-flock-camera-counts-from-the-records", "title": "ALPR tracker: every Flock camera count the records state, Axon's own figures, and a by-year camera line with its math", "content_text": "The ALPR tracker now charts every Flock camera count a City or police record states, each as its own dated point linked to its record: the 2022 pilot as the City describes it, the police memos of June, July, and September 2022 (the July 25 memo is newly added), the 2024 overview, and the 2024 annual report's statements about dash-camera plate readers and Fusus, beside the archived portal captures and this site's daily collection. The chart and the dated memo timeline point to each other, a dashed straight line carries the counts two years past the latest one and is labeled as this site's arithmetic, and the community map's own count at past dates is shown from OpenStreetMap's history. The Research notebook's records history lists the same counts in each record's own words, and the search of every Council agenda and minutes for plate-reader terms was re-run and dated October 2, 2026. The charts on /local mark the Flock rollout steps the released records state beside the Council's approval stages. The by-year panel beside reported crime now carries one line of the best-known Flock camera count each year from the 2022 pilot, with each year's source and any arithmetic listed under it (2024 is this site's sum of three Flock invoices, 18 + 2 + 29 = 49 cameras billed), and the Vehicles detected and Hotlist hits views add Axon's own 30-day figures as a separate line, never added to Flock's, and the Axon source card lists every Axon reading collected. Axon's plate readers are not in any camera count, because no source states one. The Cameras view is now one 'Cameras discovered in Altoona' line through every dated count (records, invoices, then Flock's portal) with each step listed under it, the community-mapped count beside it as its own switchable line, a change-from-the-previous-reading column for the 30-day figures, a toggle for each line of the crime-rate chart, and a second chart of Altoona's offenses reported and cleared, as Altoona PD reported them to the FBI.\n\nIncludes: Camera counts from City records, before the vendor readings begin; Camera counts: the July 25, 2022 memo added; Camera-order timeline: the community map's count at past dates; A fresh, dated search of every Council agenda and minutes for plate-reader terms; One Flock camera chart on the ALPR tracker, from the 2022 pilot to today; Charts on /local mark the Flock rollout steps the records state; The 2024 police annual report's plate-reader and Fusus statements on the ALPR tracker's charts; Tracker: Altoona's offenses and clearances get their own chart under the crime rates; Axon's own 30-day figures join the tracker's figures-over-time chart; The tracker's Axon source card lists Axon's collected readings; The tracker's camera chart adds a trend line and drops the planned total; The tracker's by-year camera line now reaches back to the 2022 pilot, with its math shown; The tracker's camera chart and its memo timeline point to each other; Tracker: Altoona's FBI clearances on the same crime chart as the offense rates, with a toggle for each line; Flock camera counts over time on the ALPR tracker, and the police memos as one dated list; Tracker: one 'Cameras discovered in Altoona' line with the community-mapped count beside it, change between readings, and FBI clearances.", "date_published": "2026-10-02T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "council", "data", "local", "police", "research", "site" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-02-roundup-council-record-timeliness-types-and-presence", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-02-roundup-council-record-timeliness-types-and-presence", "title": "Council record: how late the City posts records, meeting types, officials present back to 2020, and the September 21 and 28 minutes", "content_text": "The Council page now shows, for every known meeting since 2020, how many whole days ahead the City posted the agenda and how many days after the meeting it posted the minutes, with the median by year as a chart. Every known meeting carries its type (regular, special, budget, or workshop), each meeting total says how it splits and whether workshops are included, and the April 1, 2024 budget hearing keeps its own records instead of borrowing the regular meeting's. City officials listed in the minutes are now recorded for 27 more meetings, five late arrivals and one presiding officer are added, and each records block says how current it is. The September 21, 2026 Council minutes and the September 28 workshop minutes are on the site.\n\nIncludes: How late the City posts Council agendas and minutes; Agenda posting lead now counted in whole days; Each records block says how current it is; Meeting counts say whether they include workshops; Workshops and other meeting types counted as their own kind; City officials' attendance now covers every readable Council meeting since 2020; Five late arrivals and one presiding officer added to the Council record; April 1, 2024 budget hearing no longer borrows the regular meeting's records; September 21 minutes and the September 28 workshop are in.", "date_published": "2026-10-02T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "charts", "council", "data", "local", "pay", "people", "research", "site", "transparency", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-02-roundup-charts-and-about", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-02-roundup-charts-and-about", "title": "Charts: the data comes first, readings connect across gaps, milestone tags keep clear, hover cards rank by value, sale prices draw as lines in color, and /local compares with the area; About's costs add up", "content_text": "Line charts across the site now join two readings across dates with no reading using a thin dashed line, leaving the dates between blank rather than zero, and the numbered milestone tags above the crime charts stagger so they no longer print over each other or the end value. The median home sale price chart on /local opens as a line graph with Altoona in bold city gold and the nearest metro cities in their own colors, and every multi-line chart's hover card now lists lines from highest to lowest on the hovered date. The Census and offense-rate charts on /local gain a Compare with switch that adds Polk County, nearby cities, other Des Moines-area places, Iowa or the U.S. as gray dashed reference lines, each naming its source. About's site-traffic charts gain day and hour range switches, its project-costs total is now calculated from its own lines (under $1,000, with request fees as one under-$200 figure), and its archive coverage chart becomes a one-sentence summary above the by-year table.\n\nIncludes: About: project costs total is calculated from its lines; Altoona's line is the city's gold on every chart; About: the archive coverage chart becomes a one-line summary; Chart hover cards list the highest value first, and more lines get their own colors; Chart milestone numbers keep clear of each other and of the end value; Line charts now connect readings across dates with no reading; Charts put the data first, and long pages are easier to scan; Compare Altoona's Census and crime-rate charts with Polk County, nearby cities, Iowa and the U.S.; Site traffic charts get day and hour range switches; Home sale prices now draw as a line graph.", "date_published": "2026-10-02T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "about", "alpr", "local", "site", "transparency", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-02-no-hand-checked-claims", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-02-no-hand-checked-claims", "title": "The site no longer says its records were checked or reviewed by hand", "content_text": "Several pages said records were reviewed or checked by hand, including the votes from eight scanned sets of minutes, which were re-read from the scan images with an AI model. No person reviewed them that way, so those words are gone and the source lines say what was actually done.", "date_published": "2026-10-02T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "votes", "about", "people" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-02-flock-readings-not-read-by-hand", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-02-flock-readings-not-read-by-hand", "title": "The tracker no longer says Flock readings were read by hand", "content_text": "The ALPR tracker labeled the figures taken from Flock's own portal as read by hand. The record shows only that they were recorded from the portal, which blocks automated tools, rather than by the site's daily collection; it does not show that a person read them. They are now labeled Flock portal readings, and the figures are unchanged.", "date_published": "2026-10-02T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-02-council-year-meeting-count", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-02-council-year-meeting-count", "title": "Council page: yearly meeting count no longer counts workshops on one side only", "content_text": "The Meeting time table on the Council page showed 2026 as 18 of 20 meetings: the 18 left workshops out but the 20 counted the year's two workshops, so it looked as if two meetings had no minutes. It now reads 18 of 18 plus 2 workshops. No meeting or minutes count changed.", "date_published": "2026-10-02T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "council" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-02-auto-refresh-area-context-camera-total", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-02-auto-refresh-area-context-camera-total", "title": "Daily data refresh: Altoona by the numbers, community camera total", "content_text": "Automatic daily refresh. Altoona by the numbers 16 to 16; community camera total 67 to 67.", "date_published": "2026-10-02T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "local" ] }, { "id": "2026-10-02-audience-couples-counted", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-10-02-audience-couples-counted", "title": "Public turnout counted couples as one person", "content_text": "When the minutes list a couple in the audience as \"Pat & Kim Sample\", the public turnout count on /council treated them as one person; \"Pat and Kim Sample\" was already counted as two. Fifteen meetings from 2023 to 2026 each gain one to four people, 23 in all (2023 +4, 2024 +11, 2025 +5, 2026 +3). No vote, attendance, or public-comment record changed.", "date_published": "2026-10-02T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "council", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-28-why-page", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-28-why-page", "title": "A new page says why this site exists", "content_text": "Reader question: why does this site exist, and what does it believe? The new Why page opens with the site's mission, including what it does not argue: whether the cameras work. Seven cards, each labeled as the site's position, then set out why, with the records behind each: the vendors' own read counts and our per-day average, every camera item in the Council minutes since 2020 and how it passed, the City's approval timeline checked against the minutes, how often the Council's roll calls draw a no vote, Flock camera counts for nearby police departments from archived snapshots, officials' recorded words quoted from the minutes, two Supreme Court location-tracking rulings, and labeled outside reporting. The police page now shows the site's position, marked as such, under each of the department's and City's stated claims, with the original statements unchanged. Linked from the News & research menu, the footer, About, the police page and the ALPR tracker.", "date_published": "2026-09-28T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "site" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-28-roundup-vote-record-reparse-and-consistent-counts", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-28-roundup-vote-record-reparse-and-consistent-counts", "title": "Vote record: minutes re-parse finished, a directory review pass, and consistent meeting counts", "content_text": "The Council minutes re-parse is complete: remarks grew from 844 to 882, public-comment coverage from 152 to 160 meetings (adding hand-curated comment for the eight scanned 2022 and 2023 meetings), and minutes mentions from 3,922 to 4,076, with every vote record reconciled against the live feed. A review pass on the Property and business directory resolved 79 queued candidates: 72 entities promoted, 3 reclassified as household matters, and 17 rejected as parse artifacts. Meeting counts now say what they count (161 Council meetings with a recorded roll call, or 162 counting the July 2026 workshop, against 164 and 165 known meetings), the Mayor's card is labeled Mayor and explains presided versus present, and remarks and mentions use the one label, address withheld. The Transparency page lists five known limits of the vote record.\n\nIncludes: Property & business directory: 79 review-queue candidates resolved; Council page meeting counts say what they count; Transparency page now lists known limits of the vote record; Mayor's card is labeled Mayor and explains presided vs. present; Public comment from eight scanned 2022 and 2023 meetings added; Remarks and mentions now say \"[address withheld]\", matching Votes; Council's meeting-length line and People's roster note name the 161-meeting count plainly.", "date_published": "2026-09-28T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "council", "data", "people", "site", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-28-roundup-shared-chart-component-and-lighter-pages", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-28-roundup-shared-chart-component-and-lighter-pages", "title": "Every chart on one shared component; the homepage and Activist page load far less data", "content_text": "The Council, Votes, People, Local, Pay, and ALPR-tracker charts now share the site's figure controls: switch between chart forms and a table, filter, sort, download CSV or JSON, cite, and share a link that remembers the view. Every number is unchanged; the Census and FBI figures keep their modeled-trend bands, and the tracker's day-by-day chart still never models a trend. Two new charts on /pay show the police pay-step range by year and the stipend estimate as a share of the full rate. The homepage reads a 52 KB summary instead of 3.7 MB of vote, meeting, and remarks records, and the Activist page loads only the recent meetings it shows.\n\nIncludes: The activist page now loads only the recent meetings it shows; Council, Votes, and People charts now share the site's figure controls; The homepage loads a small summary instead of the full vote records; Local, pay, and ALPR-tracker charts move onto the shared chart component.", "date_published": "2026-09-28T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "activist", "alpr", "charts", "council", "data", "homepage", "local", "pay", "people", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-28-roundup-sale-price-trend-and-civic-map-privacy", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-28-roundup-sale-price-trend-and-civic-map-privacy", "title": "A residential sale-price trend for Altoona and 16 metro-ring cities since 1990; the civic map stops contacting outside servers", "content_text": "/local adds a Residential sale-price trend, 1990 to present: the median arm's-length residential sale price and sale count each year from Polk County Assessor sales exports, first for Altoona, Pleasant Hill, Ankeny, and Bondurant and then all 17 incorporated Polk County places in the Des Moines metro ring, sorted nearest to Altoona first. A city-year with fewer than 20 sales shows as a gap, never a small unreliable number, and the notes say which nearby counties have no comparable public data. The civic district map now serves its map code from this site and makes no outside requests by default; OpenStreetMap street tiles are an opt-in switch whose label says they load from an outside service.\n\nIncludes: Civic district map no longer contacts outside servers; An opt-in street map can now show under /local/civic's district map; Residential sale-price trend now covers all 17 Polk County cities in the metro ring; New: residential sale-price trend, Altoona and peer cities, 1990-present.", "date_published": "2026-09-28T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "data", "design-system", "local", "privacy" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-28-roundup-police-pay-across-contracts", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-28-roundup-police-pay-across-contracts", "title": "Police pay charted across every contract on file, 2007 to the most recent", "content_text": "The Public pay page opens Earlier contracts with a chart of police pay from the lowest to the highest step in every Altoona police contract on file with the Iowa Public Employment Relations Board, each in its own printed unit (annual salaries through June 2012, hourly rates after). The 2016 to 2021 contract's last two raise columns, printed with typo dates, are now dated July 1, 2019 and July 1, 2020 from the contract's term and column order, so both charts show those years.\n\nIncludes: 2019 and 2020 police hourly rates added to the pay charts; Police pay charted across every contract on file.", "date_published": "2026-09-28T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "local", "pay" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-28-roundup-navigation-feeds-and-link-previews", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-28-roundup-navigation-feeds-and-link-previews", "title": "Navigation: the menu marks every page, links land on their target, and What's new has a feed", "content_text": "The menu now names the page you are on even outside its five sections, Police Department is renamed Police accountability, and Council, Votes, and News get On this page lists. A link to part of a page drawn after it loads scrolls there, and short or mistyped addresses like /alpr go to the page they name. Every page shares one header line and one footer line, page titles shrink rather than split a word on phones, and the floating ALPR estimate steps aside for the On this page button. Shared links always carry a title, description, and preview image, and What's new and News can be followed as Atom or JSON feeds. Each day on What's new groups its changes by type.\n\nIncludes: On this page lists on Council, Votes and News; clearer menu names; Better link previews, and feeds for What's New and News; Shared links land on the record they point to; The menu shows where you are on every page; Same header line and footer on every page; the phone ALPR estimate shows its number; Page titles never split a word; phones show one floating button at a time; What's new groups each day's changes by type.", "date_published": "2026-09-28T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "council", "feeds", "navigation", "people", "seo", "site", "site-shell", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-28-roundup-charts-and-pages-on-phones", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-28-roundup-charts-and-pages-on-phones", "title": "Charts and pages read cleanly on phones", "content_text": "Charts that were drawn at desktop width and shrunk now draw at the screen's own width, so labels stay readable, and a tap opens the point you tapped, even while a readout is open. The public-comment topics heatmap fits the screen, prints each count in its cell, and its Bars and Sort options work. The Votes page draws its per-person presence charts only when that tab opens, so it loads much faster, and links into Votes open the right tab and scroll to the item. Vote counts carry one label, Named positions, with thousands separators; table captions stay on screen; the Activist page leads each roll call with its result; and printed pages no longer show chart buttons that do nothing on paper.\n\nIncludes: Activist roll calls show the result, and figure source lines read in words; Chart taps open the point you tapped; heatmap topic names read in full; Tapping chart points works while a readout is open; Charts stay readable on phones; Links into Votes land where they point, and pages read cleanly on phones; Public-comment charts on Votes: readable heatmap, working Bars and Sort, no repeated colors; Printed pages no longer show dead chart buttons; The Votes page loads faster, and its presence charts read on phones.", "date_published": "2026-09-28T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "activist", "alpr", "charts", "council", "design", "homepage", "local", "news", "pay", "people", "public-comment", "search", "site", "transparency", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-28-roundup-brief-and-full-detail", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-28-roundup-brief-and-full-detail", "title": "A Detail switch: pages open brief, with every card and chart one click away", "content_text": "A site-wide Detail: Brief | Full switch in the header, remembered between visits, lets each page open with what it answers and keep sources, methods, and secondary sections behind a short line; Full opens the cards and charts but leaves source and citation panels closed until clicked, and Expand all still opens everything. Under Brief, the Council roster is one row per member, the People directory is one row per person, Altoona by the numbers is ten Census tiles each with its trend a click away, the Projects section on Votes shows 12 of 205 projects with search and filters, and the design page shows one example per rule. A shared glossary explains a term like ALPR, hotlist, or margin of error the first time it appears on a page.\n\nIncludes: The Council roster reads as one short list, and the header's Detail switch brings the full cards back; Pages now lead with what they answer; details are one click away; The design page opens brief: one example per rule, every variant under Full; Detail: Full shows the cards and charts, not every source and citation panel; Altoona by the numbers opens as ten Census tiles, each with its trend one click away; The People directory reads as a list of rows, with the full cards under Detail: Full; The Projects section on /votes now folds instead of showing every card.", "date_published": "2026-09-28T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "council", "design", "design-system", "local", "navigation", "people", "site", "site-shell", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-28-roundup-alpr-tracker-community-totals-and-fbi-1985", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-28-roundup-alpr-tracker-community-totals-and-fbi-1985", "title": "ALPR tracker: community-mapped totals shown by default, a new Flock reading, and FBI figures back to 1985", "content_text": "The tracker's community-mapped camera total (67 presumed inside Altoona city limits, unverified) now shows by default, with a third card giving the difference from Flock's reported 51 and the assumptions behind it, and the homepage camera tile mentions the same total. The nearby-jurisdictions map adds a Polk County (unincorporated) row. Flock's portal reading for September 28: 51 cameras, 572,948 plate reads, 223 searches, and 8,557 hotlist hits over 30 days, each a rolling total. The FBI offense and clearance figures on /local and the tracker now run back to 1985 instead of 2020, with two reporting-method changes noted; 1991 shows as withheld, not zero, because Iowa's FBI reporting coverage collapsed that year. The tracker's crime panel adds the Polk County Sheriff's Office series.\n\nIncludes: Community-mapped camera totals now show by default on the tracker; the nearby map adds unincorporated Polk County; 1991's FBI figures now show as withheld, not zero; FBI offense/clearance figures now run back to 1985; Flock portal reading for September 28 added to the ALPR tracker; Homepage hero camera tile now mentions the community-mapped total; The tracker's community-mapped card now shows a Flock comparison; The tracker's year-by-year crime comparison now includes the Polk County Sheriff's Office.", "date_published": "2026-09-28T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "data", "local" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-28-police-report-in-their-words", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-28-police-report-in-their-words", "title": "The department's 2025 report, in its own words", "content_text": "The police page now quotes the department's 2025 annual report directly on where the program is headed, its scale, its results, audits, drones and camera sharing, with the site's position beside each quote. /why cites the same report.", "date_published": "2026-09-28T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "site" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-28-pay-typo-column-year-fix", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-28-pay-typo-column-year-fix", "title": "Correction: a false 2010 police hourly pay range removed from /pay and /local", "content_text": "The July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2021 police contract prints its last two raise columns with typo dates (\"7/1/209\" and \"7/1/2010\"). The police pay chart on /pay and the Census income comparison on /local read \"7/1/2010\" as a real 2010 hourly range ($27.73 to $35.62 an hour), though police contracts in 2010 set annual salaries. Both charts now leave out any column dated outside its own contract's term and say so beside the chart; those two columns' rates remain in the contract's table.", "date_published": "2026-09-28T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "pay", "local" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-28-nearby-jurisdictions-unincorporated-figure-fix", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-28-nearby-jurisdictions-unincorporated-figure-fix", "title": "Fixed the Polk County (unincorporated) camera figure on the nearby-jurisdictions map", "content_text": "The Polk County (unincorporated) row on /alpr/tracker's nearby-jurisdictions map and table had shown 103 community-mapped cameras, a six-county-area figure that did not match the map's own 10-mile view. It now shows 2, computed the same way as the distance-ring counts next to it (cameras within 10 miles of Altoona's city limit that fall outside every tracked city). The Sheriff's-office status line no longer repeats an unverified contract claim that turned out to describe a different, same-named county in Florida; it now says plainly that no record establishes the Sheriff's own ALPR contract status. The civic-page street-basemap privacy sentence now also says OpenStreetMap's tile servers can see the map area being viewed.", "date_published": "2026-09-28T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "privacy" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-27-roundup-votes-consent-items-topics-and-directory", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-27-roundup-votes-consent-items-topics-and-directory", "title": "Votes: consent-agenda items listed, public comment by topic, a year-to-date row, and a rebuilt directory", "content_text": "Every consent-agenda roll call now lists the lettered items the minutes bundle into it (1,981 items across 152 consent votes), each searchable, so the July 21, 2025 Axon agreement can be found under the vote that approved it. The Public comment tab groups every speaker entry into plain topics such as traffic, police and records, and cameras, charted by year. The Roll calls over time chart stacks Aye, Nay, Abstain, and Absent per year, the current year gets its own year-to-date row with All years and ALPR-era totals, and the sortable Table view adds a category column, a tally bar, and a per-year member grid. The Property and business directory was rebuilt from a new extraction grammar: named businesses and applicants grew from 494 to 692, with 171 projects grouped across plats, rezonings, and agreements; household matters are never named. Private requesters' names in vote titles are shortened to first name and last initial, and a private speaker who shared an official's first name is listed again.\n\nIncludes: Votes: consent-agenda items are now listed and searchable; Property and business directory rebuilt; Public comment: see what residents raise, by topic and year; Most frequent public speakers: a shared first name no longer drops a different person; Votes: every consent-agenda item is now listed, and private requesters' names are shortened; /votes: Roll calls over time now shows Aye, Nay, Abstain, and Absent, and its cards filter it; Redesigned the vote-record Table view, merged Presence into role chips, and added an Official Remarks quick-hitters view; Votes list: 2026 year-to-date row, plus All years and ALPR era totals.", "date_published": "2026-09-27T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "charts", "council", "data", "people", "privacy", "research", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-27-roundup-site-wide-search", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-27-roundup-site-wide-search", "title": "Site-wide search, from every page", "content_text": "A search box in the header of every page (and the / shortcut) now searches Council votes, official remarks and public comment, people, news, public pay, ALPR figures, and the Census and FBI figures the site already publishes. Pressing Enter opens a results page you can share, narrowed by type, year, page, or date range, and picking a result opens the page scrolled to that exact record. The header is now two rows, with the vendor-reported ALPR figures for the last 30 days on the second. The index is built from the same public feeds every other page reads.\n\nIncludes: Added site-wide search; Site header: a real search box, a working theme menu, and ALPR hits back in view; Search: a full results page with filters, and results that open on the exact record.", "date_published": "2026-09-27T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "local", "pay", "people", "search", "site", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-27-roundup-people-overview-presence-and-remarks", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-27-roundup-people-overview-presence-and-remarks", "title": "People: an overview with tenure, presence, and remarks charts, and vote outcomes on each profile", "content_text": "The People glossary opens with an overview: counts by role, a Time in the record timeline, a Who was in the room presence figure covering the Mayor, Council, police, and City officials (with officials' counts never presented as comparable to elected members' rates), and official remarks by role per year with a Public row of comment appearances, counts only. Cards and profiles show meeting presence as a rate against expected meetings, and the Mayor's card shows meetings present and presided. Each Council profile charts Aye, Nay, Abstain, and Absent per year with the cards as filters. A sortable table view replaced one that rendered blank, and chart colors were fixed for dark mode.\n\nIncludes: People cards show meeting presence; the Mayor's card no longer shows a vote stat; /people gains an overview with tenure, presence and remarks charts, a table view, and role-coded cards; /people charts: officials' listed-present counts now draw, and roles get distinct colors; People at a glance: one combined presence figure and one combined tenure figure; Remarks by role, per year: a Public row; /people table view displays correctly again; Council profiles chart every vote outcome per year, and the cards filter it.", "date_published": "2026-09-27T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "council", "data", "people", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-27-roundup-pay-income-and-stipends", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-27-roundup-pay-income-and-stipends", "title": "Pay: Census income beside police pay, estimated stipends per official, and a narrower scope", "content_text": "Altoona by the numbers again charts Census income beside the hourly step range in Altoona's police contract, on one axis as hourly equivalents of a full-time year, with three income lines (per household, per person, and per earner) explained in a plain note, Polk County Sheriff and Iowa and U.S. reference figures, and each table row able to open its own chart. The FBI charts mark the ALPR program's steps for reference only. The Public pay page adds a sortable estimate of each Mayor and Council member's cumulative stipend over their documented service, reconciled against the Council page's full-year figures and laid out to fit a phone. The pay page and income chart now cover Council, Mayor, and police only.\n\nIncludes: Census income is back beside police pay, and FBI charts mark ALPR milestones; Police pay chart shows income per household, per person, and per earner; Pay/income comparison moves to one chart; Polk County and Iowa/U.S. lines; row drilldowns; Income chart says what per household, per person, and per earner mean; /pay now estimates each Council member's and the Mayor's cumulative stipend over their documented service; Pay page and income chart narrowed to Council, Mayor and police; Public pay: the stipend estimate fits a phone, with each person's notes one tap away.", "date_published": "2026-09-27T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "charts", "data", "local", "pay", "people" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-27-roundup-menus-sharing-and-page-tools", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-27-roundup-menus-sharing-and-page-tools", "title": "Menus, sharing, page contents, and plainer caveats", "content_text": "Menu tab names now open their section, and a Tools menu gathers the district lookup, meeting guide, and records-request guide. Long pages open with an On this page list and a floating button to jump between sections. Every page has a Share menu (Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Nextdoor, Bluesky, email, and Copy link) with no tracking scripts, and each story on /news has its own link. Long notes under charts show their most important caveat as one line, with the full sources one click away. A missing address now shows a site page instead of a raw server error, the reads counter shows who is here now and links to a site-traffic chart, the About page states what the site has cost, and What's new gained a changes-over-time chart and year, month, and day groups with filters.\n\nIncludes: About: what the project costs, and related independent projects; Easier-to-read sources and caveats; A real page for a missing address, instead of a raw server error; Reads counter adds \"here now\" and links to a site-traffic chart; Menu tab names now open their section; Link straight to a story on /news; Long pages get an \"On this page\" list and shorter card runs; Share any page to Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Nextdoor, Bluesky, or email; New Tools menu for the district lookup, meeting guide, and records guide; What's new charts how often the site changes, and what kind of change; What's new: grouped by year/month/day with type filters.", "date_published": "2026-09-27T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "charts", "council", "local", "news", "pay", "site", "site-shell", "transparency" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-27-roundup-meeting-schedule-and-records", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-27-roundup-meeting-schedule-and-records", "title": "Meeting schedule from the City's archive, a public Missing records list, and eight more meetings' votes", "content_text": "The Council meeting schedule now comes from the City's posted agendas, read twice daily, instead of a hand-typed first-and-third-Monday guess, and the meeting guide shows the same next meeting as the homepage. Every page counts known Council meetings the same way, including workshops and the April 1, 2024 budget session, and the Transparency page lists each known meeting whose minutes are not on this site yet. Eight 2022 and 2023 meetings whose minutes were image-only scans are now parsed from OCR transcriptions, adding 69 vote records and 8 sessions; June 20 and December 12, 2022 remain the only Council meetings with no minutes on the site. The meeting records table is shorter, with one Minutes posted column.\n\nIncludes: Council meeting schedule now comes from the City's posted agendas, not a hand-typed guess; One count of Council meetings on every page, and a public Missing records list; Meeting guide shows the next posted meeting and reads its roster from the People records; Meeting records table: one Minutes column; Votes: the April 1, 2024 budget session now counts as its own meeting; Eight more 2022-2023 Council meetings' votes and sessions, from scanned minutes.", "date_published": "2026-09-27T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "activist", "council", "data", "local", "search", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-27-roundup-homepage-front-door", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-27-roundup-homepage-front-door", "title": "The homepage is now a front door built from live figures; stories move to /news", "content_text": "The homepage leads with one line on what the site is, then live figures: 30-day vendor-reported ALPR detections from both Flock and Axon, vendor and community-mapped camera counts, the next Council meeting, and a recap of the last one (roll calls, absences, public-comment speakers, and remarks). Tiles lead into Council and votes, People, the ALPR tracker, Local, Pay, and Transparency, each with a live teaser, and the full newsroom layout moves to /news. The Local corner gets the same next-meeting block, the last agenda in agenda order, and a live roster. Those blocks are saved into the page at each deploy, so they show without scripts and in link previews. Pages no longer jump while loading, and a late arrival noted in the minutes no longer counts as absent in the recap.\n\nIncludes: Home page now leads with live figures and a guide to the site; stories moved to /news; Homepage and the local corner, rebuilt on the feeds the site already has; Homepage ALPR figures now cover both Flock and Axon; The homepage shows its figures before scripts load, and links get a preview image; Local corner: last agenda now in agenda order; Meeting recaps no longer list late arrivals as absent; Pages stop jumping while they load, and easier-to-read meeting and profile cards.", "date_published": "2026-09-27T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "home", "homepage", "local", "news", "people", "site", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-27-roundup-council-page-roll-calls-presence-and-pay", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-27-roundup-council-page-roll-calls-presence-and-pay", "title": "Council page: what roll calls are on, presence rates, pay per meeting hour, and public turnout", "content_text": "The Council page groups all 1,941 recorded roll-call votes since January 2020 by the kind of agenda item they were taken on, charts each year's share, and adds each member's longest and current run of consecutive meetings present. Roster cards lead with presence as a rate against expected meetings, and the Mayor's card shows meetings present and presided instead of a vote statistic that cannot apply to the office. The Mayor and Council pay table now works each finished year's stipend out per meeting, meeting hour, roll-call vote, agenda item, dissenting vote, absence, and public-comment speaker, always as an aggregate of the office rather than one person's pay against their own record, with a figure for every year the records support and the current year left out until it ends. A Public turnout section reads the minutes' Audience Present line, counts only. Each section now opens from a one-line preview computed from its own data.\n\nIncludes: Public turnout: what the minutes document about who else showed up; What Mayor and Council pay works out to per meeting hour, vote, and agenda item; Council pay table adds per-dissenting-vote, per-absence, and public-comment ratios; Council pay-per-meeting table: every year now shows its figures; Council page: what roll calls are on, and consecutive meetings present; Council roll-call table now links to what those meetings cost in stipend pay; Council roster cards show presence as a rate against expected meetings; Council roster cards show meeting presence; the Mayor's card no longer shows a vote stat; /council sections now start collapsed with a one-line preview; Council stipend-per-meeting row no longer counts 2026 until the year ends.", "date_published": "2026-09-27T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "council", "data", "pay", "people", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-27-roundup-charts-modeled-trends-and-readouts", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-27-roundup-charts-modeled-trends-and-readouts", "title": "Charts: modeled trends, richer readouts, one notes panel per section, and Census back to 2009", "content_text": "Charts that run to the present now continue as a modeled trend with a shaded range, marked modeled and explained in each section's notes; totals and meeting counts are not modeled. Hover cards give each value's share of its year, the change from the year before, and per-meeting rates where they apply. Charts in a section share one collapsed notes-and-sources panel, and figures can be switched between chart forms, a table, and a list with the chosen view kept in the link. Census five-year estimates on /local now cover 16 vintages, 2009 through 2024. The district lookup map shows OpenStreetMap streets by default, with a note that its tile servers see your IP address and a switch to turn them off.\n\nIncludes: Census estimates on /local now go back to 2009; Chart sections share one notes-and-sources panel; Chart readouts say more: share, change from last year, and per-meeting rates; District lookup map shows streets by default; A shared way to switch a figure between chart forms, a table, and a list; Modeled trend on the /local income and crime-rate charts; Charts that run to the present now continue as a modeled trend, where it makes sense.", "date_published": "2026-09-27T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "charts", "council", "design", "local", "people", "site", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-27-roundup-alpr-tracker-history-and-neighbors", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-27-roundup-alpr-tracker-history-and-neighbors", "title": "ALPR tracker: readings back to July 2025, nearby jurisdictions, and one community-mapped estimate", "content_text": "The tracker's camera-count history now includes 29 Eyes On Flock readings for Altoona PD captured by the Internet Archive from July 24, 2025 through September 10, 2026, beside this site's own daily readings since September 22, 2026, and the chart switches between cameras, vehicles detected, hotlist hits, and searches, with reported crime charted beside it (side by side, not as cause and effect). The archived-readings table also covers eight nearby agencies. A Nearby jurisdictions section opens with a city-limits map of Altoona and 11 nearby cities and leads with each police agency's own vendor-reported count; community-mapped totals are optional, unverified, and off by default. One community-mapped estimate of cameras presumed inside Altoona city limits (67, beside Flock's reported 51) is published as a single reviewed aggregate, with no locations or per-area counts. The page opens summary-first, and the vendor camera-count chart waits for enough history before it draws.\n\nIncludes: ALPR tracker adds one community-mapped camera estimate, clearly separate from vendor figures; ALPR tracker: fixed the footer position, and made the page summary-first; Archived vendor history now covers nearby agencies too; Tracker: 29 archived vendor readings back to July 2025, via the Internet Archive; Daily data refresh: community camera total; Gate the vendor camera-count chart until there's enough history to read; Tracker: Altoona now sits in the Nearby jurisdictions map and table like its neighbors; Tracker: a nearby-jurisdictions camera comparison; Tracker: vendor camera counts lead Nearby jurisdictions, now with a city-limits map; ALPR tracker charts Flock's figures over time, with reported crime beside them.", "date_published": "2026-09-27T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "council", "data", "people" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-27-private-names-in-remarks", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-27-private-names-in-remarks", "title": "Private residents' names in remarks and public comment now shown consistently", "content_text": "Names of private residents in official remarks now appear as first name and last initial. A public-comment speaker's name was already shortened this way; a private person an official's own remark or a public-comment summary names in passing -- a plat applicant, a sewer-waiver requester, a business petitioner, a developer, an audience member who answered a question -- is now shortened the same way on /votes and on People minutes-mention pages. Officials, Council members, police, and organizations continue to show their full names.", "date_published": "2026-09-27T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "votes", "people", "data" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-27-pay-chart-per-person", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-27-pay-chart-per-person", "title": "Income beside police pay now compares person to person", "content_text": "The Incomes and police pay chart on Altoona by the numbers compared one police officer's hourly step range with median household income turned into an hourly figure. A household can have several earners, so that line made residents look better paid, next to one officer, than any one person is. The chart now shows two per-person Census figures instead: income per resident (per capita, which counts every resident including children and retirees) and median earnings per earner, each as an hourly equivalent of a full-time year with its margin of error. Household income is still listed with the other Census figures above.", "date_published": "2026-09-27T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "local", "charts" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-27-number-verification-pass", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-27-number-verification-pass", "title": "Verification pass: site search showed blank ALPR figures, and meeting presence now reads the same on every page", "content_text": "Answers \"do the numbers match wherever I look?\". A check of every published figure against its feed found three search results that were wrong: the Flock camera-count result read \"\u2014 cameras reported as of \u2014\" instead of 51 as of September 26, 2026; the Flock portal result showed dashes instead of its 30-day figures; and the police pay result linked to a broken anchor. All three now read from the feeds, and search results format large counts with commas. Meeting presence was printed as a whole percent on the Council page (\"Present 82%\"), one decimal on People (\"Present 82.4%\"), and with no percent on the homepage; all three now show the same \"Present 82.4% (126 of 153)\" form. The Council page's per-meeting pay note now takes its pay rates from the published pay data instead of typed-in text. No vote, presence count, pay rate or camera count changed.", "date_published": "2026-09-27T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "search", "alpr", "pay", "council", "people", "data" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-27-next-meets-banner-shows-the-next-posted-meeting", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-27-next-meets-banner-shows-the-next-posted-meeting", "title": "The \"next meets\" banner shows the next posted meeting, not a stale guess", "content_text": "The homepage and /local corner's \"next meets\" banner previously showed a cadence-derived placeholder date and an old \"last checked\" note even after the City posted a real agenda for an earlier date. It now prefers any meeting the City has actually posted something for over a cadence guess, labels a workshop as \"Council workshop\" rather than \"Council meeting,\" shows the first agenda items with a link to the posted agenda, and separately reports the latest meeting the City's archive shows was held (even when its minutes are not posted yet) alongside the latest meeting whose minutes have been reviewed. The hard-coded \"last checked\" sentence is gone; the date shown now always comes from the feed. This logic lives once in src/local-heads-up.js so the homepage and /local never disagree.", "date_published": "2026-09-27T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "local", "home" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-27-nearby-jurisdictions-correction", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-27-nearby-jurisdictions-correction", "title": "Correction: Nearby jurisdictions now leads with vendor counts; community totals are optional and unverified", "content_text": "An earlier entry today, \"Tracker: a nearby-jurisdictions camera comparison,\" described community-mapped camera counts set beside each agency's vendor-reported figure, with a difference between the two. The editor withdrew that framing. The Nearby jurisdictions section of /alpr/tracker now leads with each agency's own vendor-reported count. Community-mapped data appears only as an optional, unverified total per city, all brands and owners together, and it is off unless a reader turns it on. It is neither a comparison with, nor a count of, any agency's or brand's cameras. The Difference column was removed.", "date_published": "2026-09-27T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-27-meeting-records-match-city-archive", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-27-meeting-records-match-city-archive", "title": "Meeting records table now matches what the City posted", "content_text": "Answers \"did the City post the agenda and minutes for each meeting?\". The Council meetings by year table on /transparency and /votes understated what the City's online archive posts: it showed, for example, 8 agendas and 6 sets of minutes for 2023 and 11 agendas for 2024, when the archive lists an agenda and minutes for every meeting in both years. Checked against the archive's full listing, it now shows only what the City posted: every meeting since 2020 has both, except two February and March 2021 meetings posted without an agenda, two 2022 meetings that are not listed at all, and the newest meeting, whose minutes are approved later. The Missing records list on /transparency now says only whether the City posted each record and that it is not on this site yet. No vote, tally, or attendance record changed.", "date_published": "2026-09-27T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "votes", "data" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-27-meeting-dates-in-city-time", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-27-meeting-dates-in-city-time", "title": "Next-meeting labels use Altoona's clock, not UTC", "content_text": "On Sunday evening the homepage called Monday's Council workshop \"Tonight\" and listed it as the last meeting held, because the page compared dates in UTC, which is already the next day after 7 p.m. Central. Dates now use Altoona's time zone everywhere, a meeting dated today counts as held only once its record says so, the date is spelled out beside \"Tonight\" or \"Tomorrow\", and the agenda preview skips procedural items like Call to Order.", "date_published": "2026-09-27T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "homepage", "local" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-27-mayor-2020-absence-presiding-conflict-reviewed", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-27-mayor-2020-absence-presiding-conflict-reviewed", "title": "The Mayor's two April 2020 meetings: absent on the roll call, but presiding", "content_text": "A data check on /council noticed the Mayor's presided count (128) exceeding his present count (126) across the 154 reviewed Council sessions. Re-read against both source minutes PDFs: both meetings' opening roll call prints \"Mayor O'Connor\u2013 absent\", and neither prints an arrival time, a remote marker, or any other attendance event for him, but each minutes document separately records \"Mayor Dean O'Connor requested to approve the agenda as presented.\" This is a contradiction printed in the minutes themselves, not a parsing error: the collector already recorded the roll call as printed (absent), credited the printed presiding claim, and added a public note naming the conflict, matching the site's rule that a printed inconsistency stays as printed with a note rather than being resolved by inference. No session data changed. Added an automated check asserting a presiding Mayor must be present or have arrived, unless a documented note already explains the conflict, plus regression tests against the real minutes text pattern. Swept all 154 sessions: no other meeting, and no officer besides the Mayor at these two 2020 dates, has an undocumented version of this conflict.", "date_published": "2026-09-27T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "council", "votes", "data" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-27-community-camera-total-correction", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-27-community-camera-total-correction", "title": "Tracker: corrected the community-mapped camera card", "content_text": "Tracker: corrected the community-mapped camera card. It previously presented a 16-camera difference as a brand estimate; that label was removed.", "date_published": "2026-09-27T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "data", "privacy" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-27-community-brand-split-removed", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-27-community-brand-split-removed", "title": "Tracker: community-mapped cameras no longer split by brand", "content_text": "The tracker's camera section now shows the vendors' own figures (Flock's reported count for Altoona PD with its date, and a note that Axon's portal doesn't publish one) and a single community-mapped total, labeled unverified, which is off by default and appears with the Show the community-mapped total switch. We removed the cards and text that split community-mapped cameras by brand, compared a brand count with Flock's figure, or tied cameras to a business. Community tags can't say which vendor or owner a camera belongs to, so those figures weren't reliable. Answers the reader question: how many cameras does Altoona PD have, by the vendors' own account?", "date_published": "2026-09-27T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "data" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-26-roundup-vote-record-re-extracted", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-26-roundup-vote-record-re-extracted", "title": "Vote record re-extracted: 1,940 roll calls, movers and seconders, and workshops", "content_text": "The vote tracker now lists 1,940 roll calls, up from 1,882, after re-extracting every retained set of minutes; tally lines printed without a Roll Call Vote heading had been missed, and each ordinance reading is now its own record. 1,911 of 1,929 archived votes list who moved and 1,907 who seconded, with a note on the 31 votes where the marks and the printed totals disagree. Roll calls group by meeting day with coverage by year and month, the July 27, 2026 workshop joins the record behind a Meeting type filter, and reviewed business and public-building addresses get a Find on OpenStreetMap link; household addresses are never linked.\n\nIncludes: Find business addresses on OpenStreetMap; Council vote records re-extracted from every retained set of minutes; Votes now show who moved and seconded; Votes grouped by meeting day, with coverage by year and month; Council workshops in the vote tracker.", "date_published": "2026-09-26T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "council", "people", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-26-roundup-public-pay-page", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-26-roundup-public-pay-page", "title": "A Public pay page: Mayor, Council, police, and fire pay from official records", "content_text": "A new Public pay page lists every Altoona pay rate found in official records: Mayor and Council pay, firefighter and police step schedules, assignment and longevity pay, and earlier contracts back to 2007, each linked to its record. Under Meeting time on the Council page, a table divides each year's Council and Mayor pay by the meetings held, meeting hours, and roll-call votes, shown as ratios rather than hourly wages. The Pay, Council, Police, and People pages link to one another.\n\nIncludes: What Council pay works out to per meeting; Public pay now leads with Council and police, and links both ways; Public pay records for Altoona.", "date_published": "2026-09-26T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "council", "pay", "people", "police" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-26-roundup-public-comment-and-official-remarks", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-26-roundup-public-comment-and-official-remarks", "title": "Public comment and official remarks, straight from the minutes", "content_text": "The Votes page gains a Public comment tab covering 152 retained Council minutes since 2020: who spoke, the topic, and any official reply the minutes record, with names as printed and never addresses, plus a participation chart by year and a Most frequent public speakers table shown by first name only. An Official remarks tab searches all 844 remarks the minutes attribute to named officials, filtered by official, role, context, and year. Every comment and remark carries a source line, a permalink, and a Cite button; official replies name the speaker they answer; and each meeting card shows its public comment and remarks in place.\n\nIncludes: Public comment entries are citable; how to be heard comes first; Meeting cards show public comment and official remarks; Official remarks and titles from the minutes; Official remarks can be filtered by Mayor, Council, Police, or City officials; Search every official remark in the minutes; Public participation charted by year; Public comment record and participation trends; Official replies show which speaker they answer; Public speakers table now shows first names only; Votes: most frequent public speakers.", "date_published": "2026-09-26T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "people", "public-comment", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-26-roundup-people-officials-and-police", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-26-roundup-people-officials-and-police", "title": "People profiles for City officials and police, with their records on file", "content_text": "The People glossary adds 80 source-bound profiles: every City official named in the Council minutes and everyone on the Police Department's 2025 annual-report roster, grouped by rank and unit. Each card lists the records on file that name that person (vote positions, roll calls, meetings presided, remarks, replies, news coverage, and cited sources), and the glossary opens with how profiles are built and their limits. The Police page lists the roster and all seven K9 teams as printed in the 2025 annual report.\n\nIncludes: People glossary explains its methods and limits; People profiles for City officials and police; People cards list their records; police grouped by rank and unit; Police roster and K9 Unit as of the 2025 annual report.", "date_published": "2026-09-26T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "people", "police" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-26-roundup-charts-open-their-records", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-26-roundup-charts-open-their-records", "title": "Charts that drill down, open their records, and mark incomplete years", "content_text": "Votes and Council charts drill from years to months to meetings, and clicking a point opens the records behind it; years with incomplete minutes are drawn with hollow points and dashed lines. Line charts label their latest and high values and show every figure on hover. New charts: the share of known Council meetings whose agenda and minutes the City posts each year, FBI clearances beside offenses, Census trends across the 2021 to 2024 five-year estimates, Flock's reported camera count by data date, and Census incomes beside the published police and fire contract pay ranges.\n\nIncludes: Charts drill down by year, month, and meeting; city officials alongside council; Chart points open their records; incomplete years are marked; Charts label their key values and show a readout on hover; Charts: Council records the City posts each year, FBI clearances, and Census trends for every measure; Charts: vendor camera count over time, Altoona by the numbers, and incomes beside pay rates.", "date_published": "2026-09-26T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "charts", "council", "data", "local", "pay", "research", "transparency", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-26-roundup-attendance-and-meeting-time", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-26-roundup-attendance-and-meeting-time", "title": "Meeting attendance, times, and who presided, 2020 to date", "content_text": "Each meeting now shows its roll-call and adjournment times, the opening roll call including the mayor, late or remote arrivals, and who presided when the mayor was absent, and attendance separates members who arrived late from members absent for the whole meeting. The Council page adds meeting time and attendance by year and by person, a presence grid of every known meeting since 2020, and each year's longest and shortest meeting, with every count linking to the meetings it counts. Presence charts measure each member against their own tenure and show each role a person held. The 27 virtual meetings of 2020 and 2021 are marked, and profile cards show term dates, including for former members.\n\nIncludes: Absent versus arrived late, and editable meeting selections; Attendance counts link to their meetings and show coverage; Meeting times, mayor attendance, and who presided; Council profiles show term dates, including for former members; Presence over time on the Council page; Presence charts show each member's tenure; Links to meetings set the Votes page filters; Presence charts show each role a person held; Shortest meeting per year, linked; Virtual meetings from 2020-2021 are marked; Vote-count footnote, presence chart dots, and consistent member labels.", "date_published": "2026-09-26T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "council", "people", "site", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-26-roundup-altoona-by-the-numbers-and-district-lookup", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-26-roundup-altoona-by-the-numbers-and-district-lookup", "title": "Altoona by the numbers, and a district lookup", "content_text": "The Local corner adds Altoona by the numbers: the Census Bureau's 2024 five-year estimates for the whole city, each with its margin of error and a link to the Census table, plus the offenses Altoona police reported to the FBI each year since 2020 with Altoona, Iowa, and U.S. rates. A lookup at /local/civic shows the council ward, precinct, and polling place for a typed address or a clicked point on the map; the address stays in the browser.\n\nIncludes: Altoona by the numbers; District lookup.", "date_published": "2026-09-26T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "data", "local", "research" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-26-roundup-alpr-tracker-flock-portal", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-26-roundup-alpr-tracker-flock-portal", "title": "ALPR tracker: Flock's own portal reading, a daily archive, and the City's approval timeline", "content_text": "The tracker now reads Flock's own Altoona transparency portal (51 cameras, 572,639 vehicles detected, 244 searches, and 8,674 hotlist hits over the last 30 days), archives each day's vendor reading so the figures can be compared over time, and always shows the reading with the newest vendor data date. The City's four-stage ALPR approval timeline is quoted in the City's own words, with the one stage that matches a Council record linked to the July 21, 2025 consent-agenda vote and the other three recorded as having no matching record in posted minutes.\n\nIncludes: Link the City's own ALPR approval timeline to our vote record; ALPR tracker keeps a daily record of vendor readings; Flock portal reading added to the ALPR tracker; ALPR tracker shows the newest vendor data.", "date_published": "2026-09-26T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr", "police", "research", "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-26-lead-oconnor-lpr", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-26-lead-oconnor-lpr", "title": "Lead story: Mayor O'Connor on LPRs", "content_text": "New fact-checked lead story from the Sept. 8, 2026 minutes: after two residents raised camera concerns, Mayor O'Connor stated he is a big supporter of the LPRs. Stories can now link to the People profiles they concern.", "date_published": "2026-09-26T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "news", "people" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-26-kyle-mertz-name-correction", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-26-kyle-mertz-name-correction", "title": "Corrected council member name: Kyle Mertz", "content_text": "Vote records and the council directory listed a former council member as David Mertz. The City's minutes name him Kyle Mertz. All 942 affected vote records and his profile now use the correct name. His profile cites the minutes for his 2020-2021 service and his temporary appointment from July 2025 to June 2026, when Josh Dunwoody was on military leave.", "date_published": "2026-09-26T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "votes", "people", "council" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-26-grouped-site-menus", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-26-grouped-site-menus", "title": "Grouped menus in the header and a site map in the footer", "content_text": "The header's More box is replaced by four menus (Council, Police & ALPR, Local, and News & research) that open on hover, click, or keyboard, with a one-line description of each page. On phones, a single Menu button lists every section. Every page's footer now carries the same site map above the About, contact, and community links.", "date_published": "2026-09-26T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "site" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-26-council-presence-dunwoody-check", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-26-council-presence-dunwoody-check", "title": "Verified the Council-presence tracker for every current member", "content_text": "A reported issue said Josh Dunwoody's /votes#council-presence tenure and meetings-held lines stop around mid-2025. Re-checked against live data: his card correctly shows a most-recent appearance of September 8, 2026, documented meetings through the current year, and a chart that (accurately, not by omission) breaks into two segments around a real, sourced gap: Kyle Mertz was appointed to fill his seat for military service from July 2025 through June 2026, per Council minutes. Every other current member's card was checked the same way; none showed stale data. No code change was needed; this entry records the check.", "date_published": "2026-09-26T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-25-research-notebook", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-25-research-notebook", "title": "Research Notebook", "content_text": "Added a notebook of reviewed citywide aggregates with their sources and methodology limits.", "date_published": "2026-09-25T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "research" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-24-votes-2023-backfill", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-24-votes-2023-backfill", "title": "2023 Council votes added", "content_text": "Roll calls from the 2023 minutes were added, bringing the tracker to 1,882 records across 152 meetings.", "date_published": "2026-09-24T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-24-people-directory", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-24-people-directory", "title": "People directory", "content_text": "Added source-bound profiles for the mayor, Council members, and City officials, including dated historical biographies from official sources.", "date_published": "2026-09-24T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "people" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-24-flock-sharing-headline-corrected", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-24-flock-sharing-headline-corrected", "title": "Flock sharing headline corrected", "content_text": "The headline of the Flock sharing analysis was corrected from \"ranks 46-48 of 1,000\" to \"ties 46-48 of 1,528 portals\" to match the snapshot it cites.", "date_published": "2026-09-24T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "news", "alpr" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-24-flock-daily-collection", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-24-flock-daily-collection", "title": "Daily Flock readings", "content_text": "The tracker began collecting Flock's Altoona figures daily through Eyes On Flock, which republishes Flock's transparency portals.", "date_published": "2026-09-24T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-24-council-presence", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-24-council-presence", "title": "Council presence records", "content_text": "The Votes page added a count of meetings where each City official is listed under \"City Officials Present\" in the minutes.", "date_published": "2026-09-24T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "votes", "people" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-23-council-section", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-23-council-section", "title": "City Council section", "content_text": "City Council became its own section, with each member's share of recorded votes.", "date_published": "2026-09-23T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "council" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-23-axon-hotlist-named-categories", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-23-axon-hotlist-named-categories", "title": "Axon hotlist figures use named categories only", "content_text": "Axon hotlist-hit calculations now count only the portal's named categories.", "date_published": "2026-09-23T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-22-vote-property-business-directory", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-22-vote-property-business-directory", "title": "Property and business directory for Council votes", "content_text": "Votes whose agenda item names a street address or a business are grouped in a directory, so every vote on one site or applicant is in one place.", "date_published": "2026-09-22T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-22-alpr-tracker-launch", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-22-alpr-tracker-launch", "title": "ALPR transparency tracker", "content_text": "Launched the ALPR tracker, which shows Axon's public portal figures, read automatically, and Flock's portal figures, recorded from the portal outside the daily collection, with combined 30-day plate-read totals.", "date_published": "2026-09-22T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "alpr" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-21-votes-back-to-2020", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-21-votes-back-to-2020", "title": "Council votes back to 2020", "content_text": "Roll calls from official minutes for 2020 through 2025 were added, bringing the tracker to 1,676 records across 137 meetings. Former members appear as archived profiles.", "date_published": "2026-09-21T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "votes", "council" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-21-recorded-nay-votes-preserved", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-21-recorded-nay-votes-preserved", "title": "Recorded nay votes kept in the vote tracker", "content_text": "The vote feed was corrected to keep votes recorded as nay, such as Jayme McFadden's nay on the January 19, 2026 consent agenda. The 2026 feed grew from 146 to 164 records.", "date_published": "2026-09-21T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "votes" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-21-local-corner-and-guides", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-21-local-corner-and-guides", "title": "Local Corner, records guide, meeting guide, and police page", "content_text": "Added the Local Corner with upcoming meetings and local records, an Iowa Chapter 22 public-records guide, a guide to attending Council meetings, and a police accountability page.", "date_published": "2026-09-21T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "local", "site" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-21-council-vote-tracker", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-21-council-vote-tracker", "title": "Council vote tracker and member profiles", "content_text": "Launched the Council vote tracker with 146 roll calls from 17 meetings (January 5 to September 8, 2026), each linked to the official minutes, plus profiles of current Council members with their term dates.", "date_published": "2026-09-21T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "votes", "council" ] }, { "id": "2026-09-14-newsroom-launch", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-09-14-newsroom-launch", "title": "Newsroom, news archive, sourcebook, and contact form", "content_text": "The site became a public-records newsroom for Altoona, Iowa: a news archive fed from reviewed stories, a sourcebook of official record sources, and a contact form for corrections and tips.", "date_published": "2026-09-14T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "news", "sources", "site" ] }, { "id": "2026-04-12-site-launch", "url": "https://deflockaltoona.com/whats-new#2026-04-12-site-launch", "title": "Deflock Altoona launches", "content_text": "The first version of deflockaltoona.com went online.", "date_published": "2026-04-12T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": [ "site" ] } ] }