About city pages

City pages bring together what matters for voters in one city: the quizzes on your ballot, how your City Council votes and who shows up, and how your city’s State Representatives and State Senator vote at the State House. Fall River is the first city. More are on the way.

Where the City Council votes come from

Every council vote comes from the official minutes kept by the City Clerk and posted on the city’s website. Each vote links to the page of the minutes where it is recorded, and each meeting links to its agenda packet and meeting video, so you can check anything yourself.

How we read the minutes

The posted minutes are scanned images, so we read them with text recognition and then check every vote.
Every vote count is checked against the councilors the minutes name. We quote the exact sentence from the minutes under each vote.
When the minutes name who voted no but give no count, we count from those names and say so on the vote.
When the count and the names don’t match, we show the official count only, with a note. We never guess how someone voted.
We send our records to the City Clerk to confirm, and we correct anything they find.

What the words mean

Unanimous appears only when the minutes say “unanimously voted.” It means every councilor present at that moment voted yes.
Absent means the minutes list the councilor as absent, or “absent and not voting” on that vote.
Abstained means the minutes say the councilor abstained or voted “present.”
Procedural votes (adjourning, waiving the rules, taking items together) are hidden by default. Tick the box on a meeting page to see them.
A vote to refer, table or amend is not the final decision on an item. The final vote is listed separately when it happens.

Committees and meeting nights

On a typical council night, public hearings, the Committee on Finance and sometimes another committee meet before the regular meeting. Each meeting date has one page with everything that happened that evening, in order. Committee votes are recommendations; the full council takes the final vote. Committee minutes are posted inside the agenda packet for the meeting where the council approved them, so our links point there.

Attendance

Attendance comes from the roll call at the start of each meeting. Council, committee and hearing attendance are counted separately. When the minutes note that a councilor stepped out or returned, we show it with the time. We list attendance as plain counts and dates. We never turn it into a percentage, score or ranking.

Council sessions

Fall River city councilors serve two-year terms. A new council is sworn in on the first Monday of January after the November election. Every vote is shown with the council that took it, so a vote in early January before the swearing-in belongs to the outgoing council. Earlier sessions are being added.

What isn’t included yet

Minutes for most standing committees. The city posts minutes for the Committee on Finance and the public hearings, and we include both: their votes, attendance and a link to the page where each vote is recorded. For the other committees we show their members and the recommendations they sent to the full council, with the council’s vote.
Charter objections, when a councilor’s objection puts off a vote to a later meeting. These are not votes, so they are not counted as votes.
Meetings whose minutes the city has not posted yet.

State House votes and ballot quizzes

State House votes come from the Massachusetts Legislature’s official roll calls (see About the vote tracker). Ballot quizzes use only the candidates’ own words and, for ballot questions, the official Information for Voters guide (see About MassVoter).

Photos

Councilor photos are cropped from the city’s official City Council group photo. Legislator photos come from the Massachusetts Legislature. Everyone gets the same frame.

Nonpartisan, always

MassVoter never grades officials and never endorses. The only rankings are plain counts from the official record, such as meetings attended, using the same rule for everyone. City elections in Fall River are nonpartisan, so no party is shown for councilors.

See a mistake?

Email info@massvoter.com with the page and what looks wrong. We check it against the official record and fix it quickly.