About Port Hope Council Watch

An independent resident project that makes Port Hope Council's work easier to follow: what was decided, what it costs, and where to read the original documents.

Who runs it

Port Hope Council Watch is run by Howard Bouk, a Port Hope resident and independent data consultant. It is not affiliated with, funded by or endorsed by the Municipality of Port Hope, any member of Council or any candidate.

How the content is made

1. Collect. Each morning, scripts check the Municipality's eSCRIBE meeting portal for new agendas, minutes and reports, and find the meeting recording on the Municipality's YouTube channel.
2. Transcribe. The recording's audio is transcribed on a local computer. Transcripts are used to understand the discussion; they are not published, and they misspell names, so the minutes are treated as the authority for who moved what.
3. Summarize and assess. Anthropic's Claude, an AI model, writes a plain-language summary from the agenda, minutes and transcript. For by-laws, fees and budget reports it also writes an assessment, and checks budget variances against Council minutes to see whether spending was approved.
4. Review. Every page is published to a private preview first. Howard reads it against the sources before it goes live. Each page says when it was generated and when it was reviewed.
5. Link to sources. Every page links to the agenda, minutes, reports and recording it was built from, so you can check it yourself.

Charts on budget pages are drawn from the numbers in the Municipality's own reports, and each chart has a "Show the numbers" table beneath it.

What this site is not

It is not an official record. The Municipality's minutes and by-laws are the official record. AI-generated summaries can contain errors or miss context, which is why each page links to its sources and has a corrections process.

Corrections policy

If you find an error, email contact@porthopecouncilwatch.ca with the page and what's wrong. Confirmed errors are fixed promptly, and the page gets a dated note in a "Corrections" section saying what changed. Pages are not silently rewritten.

Council members

Vote tables name Council members because motions and votes are public record. Member pages list only their public role and their motions and recorded votes.