Tools, CBs, and Joining Open New York
Howdy doody,
If you are still reading this I have two requests:
- Let me know! You can just reply to this email.
- If you like it, please forward it along to folks who might be interested.
Last week's Stated Meeting was the first of the new session so it was all procedural.
In lieu of a legislative update I'm sharing an update on tooling I've been working on, an organization I've joined, and the possibility of expanding my focus to include NYC Community Boards and other activity that precedes bill-drafting: moments we can influence outcomes.
From here on out, I'm matching the council's vote cadence and publishing this newsletter every two weeks.
Thanks!
- Vikram
Last week I shared what's in the city council's public records and how their legislative process essentially works.
The major takeaways are:
- The records are sparse and don't tell the whole story.
- The meetings are largely pre-determined.
- There is still useful information in reams of documents that no one reads, and hours of hearings no one listens to.
- AI helps me find stuff. (And I provide examples.)
Go read it if you haven't. It's the issue that received the most positive feedback to-date and the one I enjoyed writing the most.
Tools to navigate and research multi-hour hearings
I spend a lot of time reading multi-hour hearing transcripts and I'd like more help from AI to navigate them.
Unfortunately, one of the many areas where GPT-4 fails is when you feed it large bodies of text. Multi-hour hearing transcripts are long and I have had little success extracting useful information from them using GPT-4 alone.
Prompts also don't provide any affordances. If GPT-4 follows my prompt poorly (e.g. "Answer this question...", "Summarize...") my only options are to try another prompt or go back to reading the transcript line-by-line.
I've been working on a tool that makes navigating hearings easier (screenshot above). I've posted links to a prototype with two meetings here (designed for desktop, not mobile, use):
Each chapter you see there is AI-generated. So are the titles and summaries. I'd like to work on extracting useful pull quotes, questions, and claims-speakers-make next: things I'm actually looking for.
There are known bugs, and the chapters we extract can be better. We'll improve and fix these things and work on new features.
But the experience you see at those links is the basic idea.
If you found this pretty neat or if you think we should give this treatment to other public meetings or content, please holler. I'll be using this tool to research happenings for this newsletter.
Open New York: New Yorkers for More Housing
Housing is expensive and there isn't enough of it. There is no path forward where NYC grows sustainably without reducing and stabilizing housing costs.
Unfortunately, our housing policies and entrenched interests get in the way.
We need to build housing of all kinds aggressively to prevent displacement, to keep it affordable for low-to-middle-income families to stay, to make NYC's abundant opportunity accessible to everyone, and to create healthier, integrated communities.
On a personal level, I've called NYC home since 2012. My wife and I have set roots here, love the community we've built, and we don't want to leave. But living here is obscenely expensive and so many people I know (and miss) have left because of housing costs. I'd like to live here more affordably, I'd like my community to stay, and I'd like growing families to stay.
I recently learned about and joined Open New York (ONY), a pro-housing organization, to help the cause. If any of the above resonates, please check them out and consider joining.
City of Yes is a City Hall proposal for a package of zoning rule changes that will make it easier to build housing. As opposed to playing whack-a-mole with individual efforts to build housing, like this current one near Windsor Terrace, City of Yes lifts all boats.
The time to voice support for City of Yes is now, at community board meetings. Aggressive support at community board meetings will help make sure these rule changes don't get watered down by the time the city council drafts legislation for them.
Community board meeting coverage
I didn't understand the role and power that community boards have in shaping legislation in the city until recently.
Their meetings are all on YouTube and I'd like to cover them because they provide leading indicators for some of what might happen in the city council.
If you're interested in community board coverage, please let me know what would be most useful or interesting to you -- I'll be experimenting with it in the next couple of months.
Thanks for reading! The cartoons in this issue are all by katiebcartoons.
Comments? Suggestions? Want to hear more about something?
You can send an email to voberoi@gmail.com or reply to this email.