Every word, on the record
Open City: live transcripts
A live, word-for-word transcript of every Common Council and committee meeting, with the documents beside the words.
This is a proposal. It is an idea for Sheboygan, not a city plan or a decision.
Source for this page: vision-live-transcripts-2026-10-03.md, a policy brief by Mike Brunette. Statements about what Sheboygan does today and every price below come from that brief. They are not part of the five fact-base files, so they are marked “verifying” until each one is checked.
The proposal
Every Common Council and committee meeting gets a live, word-for-word transcript on the city website while the meeting happens. Each agenda item links to its documents as it comes up. Within 24 hours, the city posts a corrected final transcript next to the video. The corrected transcript becomes the official record, with the approved minutes still listing motions and votes.
How it would work
- Sheboygan already has the pieces. The brief says meetings are recorded, aired live on Spectrum 990 and AT&T U-Verse 99, and posted with agendas, packets, minutes and video on the city’s Municode Meetings portal. Verifying
- The platform offers transcripts. The brief says CivicPlus, which runs Municode Meetings, sells live machine captions, human-reviewed captions, and a transcript file at no extra cost once captions are on. See CivicPlus help and its FAQ. Verifying
- Live draft, then a corrected final. Speech-to-text writes the live draft. A clerk or vendor fixes names and errors against the video, adds links, and posts the final within 24 hours.
Rough cost
Published prices, per meeting hour. Sheboygan’s own price needs a quote.
| Option | Published price | Source |
|---|---|---|
| AI speech-to-text (raw) | $0.20 to $0.30 per hour | Rev AI pricing |
| Human-corrected transcript | $1.99 per minute (about $119 per hour) | Rev AI pricing |
| Human live captioner (CART), remote | $88 per hour (Port St. Lucie, FL); $89 per hour (Ai-Media state contract); $105 to $115 per hour (Knox County, TN, 2026) | Port St. Lucie, VHEAP/Ai-Media, Knox County |
| CivicPlus Media captions in the city’s platform | Quote needed | CivicPlus |
| Staff time to correct and link the final | Quote needed | City Clerk estimate |
For scale, the brief says the September 8, 2026 Council meeting ran about 2 hours 15 minutes (minutes). At those rates a live AI draft costs pennies per meeting. Most of the real cost is correcting the final: roughly $200 to $270 per meeting at the outside human rates above, or a few hours of staff time.
Others already do this
- San José, CA: live machine captions on every Council meeting, with the transcript posted alongside the video (sample transcript). Since 2024, residents can follow live captions and translation on their phones (city page).
- Austin, TX: each Council meeting page lists the agenda, backup documents, minutes, video, and a “Closed Caption Transcript” (Aug. 6, 2026 meeting, Sept. 24, 2026 transcript).
- Norman, OK: since 2021, live closed captions on streamed public meetings, with captions added to the YouTube and Facebook copies within 24 hours (city announcement).
- Philadelphia, PA: verbatim transcripts of Council sessions going back to 1997, searchable by date (Transcript Room).
Honest caveats
- Live text will have errors. The brief says CivicPlus rates its live machine captions at “80%+” accuracy and its human-reviewed captions at 99%. That is why the live text is labeled a draft and the corrected final is the record. The brief says San José and Austin currently call their transcripts unofficial. Making ours official is the step forward, and it only works because of the correction step.
- Closed sessions stay closed. Anything lawfully held in closed session under Wis. Stat. 19.85 is not transcribed publicly. The transcript simply notes when the body went in and came out.
- Personal and privileged information stays private. If a resident reads out a medical detail or a home address, the final can redact it, with the redaction noted. This follows Wisconsin’s public records policy of the greatest possible access (Wis. Stat. 19.31).
The smallest first step
The brief says that today Sheboygan has agendas, packets, video, and action minutes that record motions and roll-call votes, but no word-for-word transcript. Verifying
The first step: the Council asks the Clerk to turn on captions and transcripts for Common Council meetings only, as a 90-day pilot. The Clerk reports back with the actual cost, accuracy and staff time. If the pilot works, the Council expands it to all committees and adopts a rule making the corrected transcript the official record.