Why we created understory.
City representatives make decisions that impact the food you and I eat, the roads we drive, parks we enjoy, the funds our schools spend, and the safety we feel every week. Yet it’s hard not to feel that most local government policies and decisions that impact most residents are difficult to access.
Understanding which policy decisions are made on our behalf requires countless hours searching through websites, and looking through documents and archives to answer simple questions like… Did the person I voted for support the measures I care about like they said they would?
It’s no surprise that voters often feel disconnected and disengaged. Apart from the weeks leading up to elections every 2-4 years when we scramble to funnel years of complex policy decisions and candidate voting records into a single vote - it just takes too much time.
That’s why we believe that engaging and sharing ideas with our representatives shouldn’t be a chore. Finding out what the city is doing shouldn’t require deep-dives into difficult to find reports, flipping through city meeting minutes, attending an inconveniently timed zoom call, or taking a drive to city council to attend meetings in person. Local government information shouldn’t be buried deep in complex websites, PDFs, or lengthy reports difficult for anyone to find.
The state of city data at best requires the average citizen, special interest group, and city employees to spend hours of time looking for information they need. We believe, and personally feel, this in turn, creates a lack of citizen-government engagement.
Most of us have strong opinions about how their cities are run. Because of this, we believe lack of citizen-government engagement is not due to a lack of interest, but a lack of easy access to the information we need to influence policy.
That’s why we built Understory - to make it easier for constituents to get the exact city government information they need. Using some of the latest AI tools available, we take your city council’s meeting minutes, city reports, and state wide bill information as the primary sources to all your city related questions. No more deep diving through political literature or news articles. Just ask Understory.
Video: finding city council housing policy in Santa Barbara, CA.
With Understory, you can ask smarter questions and get smarter answers. We can fact check the next policy proposal, and even build arguments for the project you want funded.
Understory gets you what you want and when you want to help drive decisions with your city.
Or as 2015 Aaron Burr famously sang in the musical, Hamilton:
