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Election season is upon us. If you have not voted in this year's primary, do so. But this idea is about the votes of municipal decision makers: volunteer members of our Village Planning Committees, the Board of Adjustment, Design Standards Committee, and Planning Commission... people just like you and me who, through these official channels, review, discuss, and make formal recommendations about specific projects that impact neighborhoods, retail corridors, or wide swaths of land in our city.

While meetings of the Village Planning Committees, Board of Adjustment, Design Standards Committee, and Planning Commission are open to the public, they are not well attended (unless it's a really "big" issue). Meeting agendas and minutes are available, one by one, online.

But how do these bodies vote over time? Are their votes truly reflective of the spirit and word of the adopted General Plan? Do their votes tend to favor/oppose "sprawl," or favor/oppose development projects out of scale with the surrounding environs, or favor/oppose the destruction of our historic and natural resources?

Such trends could be easily determined by online recording of every vote by every decision maker. Let's say Issue XYZ is voted on such-and-such a date. Every decision maker raises their hand "yes" or "no." Then, recorded on a searchable and sortable online spreadsheet is the (1) issue name (2) property address related to the issue, (3) name of Village and Council District, (4) link to a description of the issue and related documents, (5) date the vote was taken, (6) name of decision maker, (7) the decision maker's occupation, (8) the decision maker's term of office, (9) his/her formal vote or whether he/she abstained or was absent, (10) total vote, and (11) final outcome (after getting through the other stages of the process).