Wedge field 3 of 4
Hearing Outcomes
Approved, denied, continued, withdrawn, approved-with-conditions, denied-without-prejudice. Plus the vote, the dissenters by name, and the procedural posture — extracted across 3,142 US counties, refreshed weekly.
Definition
What it is
What actually happened at the meeting. A controlled enum spanning approval, denial, continuance, withdrawal, approval-with-conditions, denial-without-prejudice, tabling, and remand. Plus the vote count, the dissenting members by name, any roll-call notes, and the procedural posture — continued to a date certain vs indefinitely continued vs approved on consent.
Outcomes are also the raw material for jurisdictional approval rates — the leaderboard metric every Land Committee memo needs. cityminutes aggregates outcomes into rolling T12 and T36 approval rates per jurisdiction per use-type and exposes them via the API and on every county dashboard.
Real example
Austin City Council, item 63 — case C14-2026-0091
5.3-acre parcel at 1100 E. 51st Street. Council voted 7–4 to deny the applicant's request to rezone from SF-3 to MF-6. The four affirmative votes came from districts 1, 4, 7, and 9. Votes against: districts 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, and the mayor. The denial was explicitly “without prejudice,” meaning the applicant can refile with a modified proposal without the customary 12-month moratorium. Staff had recommended approval with conditions; the commission had recommended approval; the council overrode both.
{
"case_number": "C14-2026-0091",
"jurisdiction_id": "tx-travis-austin",
"applicant": "1100 E 51st Partners LLC",
"use_type": "multifamily",
"hearing_body": "Austin City Council",
"hearing_date": "2026-03-12",
"outcome": "denied_without_prejudice",
"vote": {
"yes": 4,
"no": 7,
"abstain": 0
},
"yes_voters": ["D1", "D4", "D7", "D9"],
"dissenters": ["D2", "D3", "D5", "D6", "D8", "D10", "Mayor"],
"procedural_notes": "Council overrode staff recommendation of approval-with-conditions and commission recommendation of approval. Denial without prejudice — 12-month moratorium waived.",
"next_hearing_date": null,
"effective_date": "2026-03-12"
}Why it matters
The split between staff rec and council outcome is a volatility signal
Outcomes are what permit feeds imply but never surface directly — and when they do, it's 60–180 days late and missing the vote count, dissenters, procedural posture, and qualifiers. For Land Acquisition, an “override” outcome (council overruled staff) is a signal the jurisdiction is volatile and approval rates published anywhere else are wrong. For Pre-Construction BD, approved-with-conditions projects convert to real bids at ~80%, vs ~30% for clean approvals — the procedural posture is the prioritization signal.
Hearing outcomes — FAQ
What outcomes do you track?
A controlled enum: approved, approved_with_conditions, denied, denied_without_prejudice, continued, withdrawn, tabled, and remanded. Every value is mapped from the canonical motion language in the meeting record.Do you capture vote counts and dissenters by name?
Yes. Every record carries vote_yes, vote_no, vote_abstain, and a dissenters array of named members on the dissenting side. Roll calls are extracted from minutes and meeting video transcripts where available.How is this different from a permit feed implying outcomes?
Permit feeds infer "approved" 60–180 days late from the existence of a permit, and they cannot surface vote counts, dissenters, procedural posture, or qualifiers like "denied without prejudice." cityminutes ships the outcome the day the meeting concludes, with the full procedural detail.Can I build jurisdictional approval rates from this data?
Yes. Outcomes feed rolling T12 and T36 approval rates per jurisdiction per use-type — the leaderboard metric every Land Committee memo needs. Approval rates are exposed via the API and pre-rendered on every county dashboard at /planning/{state}/{county}.Which personas care most about hearing outcomes?
Critical for Land Acquisition (P1) and Developers & Investors (P4) — outcomes feed jurisdictional approval rates and entitlement risk scoring. High for Pre-Construction BD (P1B), where approved-with-conditions projects convert to bids at ~80%.How accurate are the outcome and vote enums?
≥98% accuracy on outcome enum and vote count, measured against meeting video and minutes cross-check. Disagreements between the LLM extractor and the rules-based template extractor route to human QA.
Field 3 of 4
Build approval rates the way underwriters build loss curves.
Weekly hearing outcomes from every US planning commission with vote counts, dissenters, and procedural posture — aggregated into rolling T12 and T36 approval rates per jurisdiction.