The public record, connected
Everything your town decides, finally connected.
Town Communicator gathers your town's meeting minutes, ordinances, permits and parcels into one searchable record — then shows how each decision connects to the next, and how long it's been in the making.
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Who it's for
Find yourself here.
The same public record answers very different questions depending on who's asking. Pick the one that sounds like you.
- I live in a town“What's happening on my street?” Search your town's meetings, decisions and permits — and get answers that cite the document.
- I live outside a town“Who decides things where I live?” No mayor, no town council — the county decides. Follow the body that actually governs your address.
- I'm looking to build, buy or invest“What's allowed on this piece of land?” Parcel-level zoning, growth areas, enterprise zones — and the meeting history behind them.
- I represent a town“Can we give residents this?” What it costs a town to be covered, what it doesn't cost, and what we will never do with your record.
- I work in a town office“Where did we put that?” Institutional memory that outlasts staff turnover — and grant reporting that starts filled in.
- I work for a county“Can this work across every town we serve?” One record spanning the county and its municipalities, and the same reporting relief for county staff.
Why it matters
Public, but out of reach.
Local government touches daily life more than any other — zoning, permits, taxes, the road in front of your house. But the record of it is scattered: the agenda on one vendor's portal, the minutes on page 47 of a PDF, the code on a different site again, the permit at the county. Technically public; practically invisible.
What it does
One connected record of the whole town.
Not a document dump — a living record where every piece knows what it relates to.
Ask in plain language
Have a conversation with the record. Every answer is built only from the town's own documents and cites each source — and says so plainly when the record is silent.
Every document, summarized
A plain-language summary and topic keywords on every agenda, minutes and ordinance, so you know what a document says before you open it.
"How long have we been talking about this?"
A timeline for any ordinance, project or plot of land — first mention to most recent, with the passage that actually pertained to it at each step.
Select a plot of land
Click any parcel to see its zoning, ownership and sale history, its flood zone and Critical Area status, its schools and districts — and every meeting that named it.
Follow what matters to you
Follow a parcel, project or ordinance and we'll tell you when it comes up again — so you hear about the thing on your street before it's decided, not after.
Keep your research together
Gather everything around one question in a project — the conversations you've had, the topics you're watching, and content of your own.
The difference
The connections are the point.
A single decision leaves a trail across years and systems. Town Communicator reassembles that trail.
Residents can finally see how the interconnectedness of everything shapes the activities and goals of their town.
How it works
From scattered files to a searchable record.
An automated pipeline does the tedious work, so the record stays current on its own.
Collect
Adapters gather documents straight from the town's and county's real systems — nothing re-keyed by hand.
Extract
Every document is read for what matters: people, parcels, ordinances, permits and named projects.
Connect
Those become a knowledge graph — each link backed by the exact quote and page it came from.
Explore
Browse it, map a parcel, trace a topic through time, or simply ask a question.
The vision
An informed community participates better — because it can finally see the whole picture.
When residents can trace how a decision was made, what it connected to and how long it's been in motion, local government stops being a black box. Understanding is the first step to participation — and to a town that shapes its own future on purpose.
Running today
Live on Maryland's Eastern Shore.
Real public records, from Maryland's Eastern Shore.
Sign up — it's freeNot affiliated with the jurisdictions it covers, or any other government body. Every record links back to its official source, and summaries and answers are AI-generated from those records — unofficial, so verify anything important at the source.