Product
The pre-permit data layer that ships the 4 fields your competitors don't
cityminutes reads every planning commission, zoning board, and city council proceeding across 3,142 US counties — 50 states, refreshed weekly — and hands you structured conditions of approval, community objections, hearing outcomes, and staff recommendations weeks to months before any permit exists.
- counties
- 3,142
- states + DC
- 50
- refresh
- weekly
- wedge fields
- 4
The 4-field wedge
What cityminutes extracts that nobody else does
Every competitor in the pre-permit space stops at the project header or stops at the permit. Both sides leave the same four fields on the floor.
- 01
Conditions of Approval
Numbered conditional clauses imposed on every approved project — affordable set-asides, traffic impact fees, setbacks, dedications, phasing requirements. The numbers that quietly rewrite the pro forma.
Learn morePhoenix PC, case Z-2025-1142 — 5 conditions including 200 affordable units (60–80% AMI) and a $4.2M traffic impact fee. - 02
Community Objections
Counts, themes, named groups, sentiment. The most defensible leading indicator of approval probability and legal-challenge risk in the pre-permit stack.
Learn moreLoudoun BoS data center SLDU-2026-0008 — 47 comments, 43 opposed, 28 cited traffic, 19 cited groundwater. Hearing continued. - 03
Hearing Outcomes
Approved, denied, continued, withdrawn, approved-with-conditions, denied-without-prejudice. Plus the vote, the dissenters by name, and the procedural posture.
Learn moreAustin City Council case C14-2026-0091 — 7–4 denial, denied without prejudice, council overrode staff and commission. - 04
Staff Recommendations
The planning department's recommended action plus the FAR, density, and height ceiling staff will support. Predicts the commission vote in ~80% of cases.
Learn moreMecklenburg County (NC) case 2026-086 — staff recommended approval with conditions; FAR ceiling 2.1; commission voted 5–2 to approve.
cityminutes vs Shovels vs boardwalkai vs Dodge vs ConstructConnect
| Feature | Popularcityminutes3,142 counties · weekly | Shovels + ReZonePermit data platform | boardwalkai1,575 counties claimed | DodgeReporter-driven, since 1891 | ConstructConnectBid + permit aggregator |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The 4-field wedge | |||||
| Conditions of Approval (structured) | Included | Not included | Not included | Not included | Not included |
| Community Objections (counts + themes) | Included | Not included | Not included | Not included | Not included |
| Hearing Outcomes (vote + dissenters + enum) | Included | Partial | Partial | Not included | Not included |
| Staff Recommendations (enum + ceilings) | Included | Not included | Not included | Not included | Not included |
| Coverage and lead time | |||||
| Pre-permit lead time | 8–24 months | 0–2 months | Claims 12–24 mo | 0–60 days pre-bid | 0–60 days pre-bid |
| Nationwide counties covered | 3,142 (50 states) | 48 states / 85% pop | 1,575 claimed | All-US | All-US |
| Access and surface | |||||
| Server-rendered public SEO | Included | Included | Not included | Included | Included |
| Self-serve signup + sandbox | Included | Not included | Auth-gated | Not included | Not included |
| Native CRM integrations | Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Zapier | Limited | Not included | Limited | Limited |
Frequently asked questions
What data does cityminutes extract?
Structured records for every rezoning application, variance request, subdivision proposal, development agreement, site plan, PUD, conditional-use permit, general plan amendment, and annexation filing heard by any US planning commission, zoning board, or city council. For each, we extract the 4-field wedge: conditions of approval, community objections, hearing outcomes, and staff recommendations. Every record carries a parcel join key, canonical source link, and last-updated timestamp.How often is the data refreshed?
Weekly, with a 7-day per-county refresh guarantee. Most jurisdictions refresh within 24 hours of new agenda publication. Breaking-news alerts fire the same day for major decisions on customer watchlists.Which counties are covered?
All 3,142 US counties across 50 states plus DC. Active ingestion is live in the top 50 metros by planning-commission velocity, with rolling expansion to the full target over 12 months. Live per-county freshness on /coverage.How does cityminutes differ from Shovels or Dodge?
Shovels + ReZone is a permit-data platform whose Decisions schema covers project metadata but not the 4-field wedge. Dodge is a reporter-driven lead-gen platform — cityminutes is 8–18 months upstream because we read meeting packets, not the bid/permit signal. Both are valid for their categories. Neither occupies the pre-permit meeting-layer category cityminutes defines.What is a "condition of approval"?
A condition of approval is a requirement attached to a land-use approval that the applicant must satisfy before the approval runs with the land. Examples: affordable-housing set-asides, traffic impact fees, infrastructure commitments, setback requirements, tree-preservation mandates, phasing triggers. Conditions live in meeting minutes and staff reports — never in the permit record.Can I integrate cityminutes with Salesforce?
Yes — native Salesforce integration pushes filings, staff reports, and outcomes into Salesforce as Opportunities, pre-tagged by territory, use-type, and applicant. HubSpot, Slack, Zapier, Unanet, and Deltek follow the same pattern.Do you offer an API?
Yes — a versioned REST API (OpenAPI 3.1 spec) with endpoints for decisions, conditions, objections, outcomes, staff recommendations, applicants, jurisdictions, and change feeds. GraphQL is available for cross-entity queries. Sandbox access is free for 14 days with self-serve signup.How do you validate data accuracy?
Double extraction: an LLM structured extractor and a rules-based template extractor for major agenda systems. Disagreements route to human QA. Per-field targets: ≥97% on condition-of-approval full-text, ≥98% on hearing outcomes and staff recommendations, ≥95% on objection counts. Every record links back to the canonical source PDF with page number and extraction timestamp.Is it legal to aggregate public meeting data?
Yes. Planning commission and council meetings are public proceedings published under state sunshine laws. cityminutes aggregates only what each jurisdiction publishes in its public record, respects robots.txt and city terms of use, and honors documented takedown requests.
See it on a real county
Pick a jurisdiction. We'll show you the parse.
This week's planning commission agenda, the last 30 days of decisions, and the 4-field wedge parsed out of the last 10 staff reports.