Somerville City Council

Loaded: every full City Council meeting with minutes online, from January 1, 2018 through September 24, 2026 (231 meetings: regular, special, the organizational meetings each January, and three joint meetings with the School Committee, where only the council’s votes are shown). Minutes through June 2022 come from the city’s old meeting portal and minutes from July 2022 from its Legistar site. Until early 2019 the council was called the Board of Aldermen. Committee and special committee meetings are not loaded, and neither are the November “caucus” meetings, where the incoming council holds a nonbinding vote on its next President. Not here: the minutes of the November 9, 2021 and January 13, 2022 regular meetings and the May 19, 2022 special meeting, which the city has not posted (agendas only; later minutes approve them). MassVoter is asking the City Clerk for them. Older council minutes (2010 to 2017) are online and not loaded here. Attendance comes from the attendance list in the minutes; for thirteen 2022–2026 meetings whose minutes have no list, it comes from the council’s official “Call of the Roll” record on Legistar. Councilors the minutes say arrived late are shown as present. Somerville’s minutes record a result for each item. Roll calls list each councilor by name (“AYE: … NAY: … ABSENT: …”); for those MassVoter shows each councilor’s vote after checking the names against the attendance list. Councilors listed as absent or recused for a single vote are left out of it. Most routine items show only “RESULT: APPROVED”; for those MassVoter shows the result only and never assumes the vote was unanimous. When a roll call leaves out a councilor who was at the meeting, MassVoter shows the other councilors’ votes and leaves that councilor out of the vote, with a note. When the names do not fit the result, it shows the count only and adds a note. Items referred to committee, placed on file, marked “work completed”, laid on the table or withdrawn are not votes and are not listed, unless the minutes give a roll call on them; moments of silence and the call of the roll are not listed. Elections of the Council President and Vice President show the result only, with a note listing the councilors who voted. We will ask the City Clerk to confirm any noted vote.