Council Agenda Keyword Monitor

Find out when a city council or county board is about to vote on something you care about: a new contract, a software purchase, a grant, a body-worn camera program or an RFP. Give it a list of governments and keywords, and it scans their upcoming and recent meeting agendas, then returns every matching agenda item with the meeting date, the body, the file number and a link to the agenda PDF.

Who uses it

• Vendors and sales teams selling to local government: see purchases on the agenda before the vote.
• Grant writers and nonprofits: catch grant acceptances, funding items and new programs.
• Government relations, advocacy and journalists: track topics across many cities in one feed.
• Consultants: monitor clients' and prospects' councils on a schedule.

How it works

1. Reads meetings in your date window from each government's public Legistar Web API (no login, no scraping of web pages, no proxies).
2. Reads each meeting's agenda items and matches your keywords as whole words or phrases (case-insensitive).
3. Returns one row per matching item. With Only new matches on, scheduled runs return only items you haven't seen before, so you can wire it to email, Slack or Google Sheets with an Apify integration.

Personal matters (appointments, claims, settlements, lawsuits, personnel) are skipped by default.

Input

Field	Example	Notes
Governments	austintexas, seattle	The Legistar client name, usually the subdomain of the city's legistar.com site (for austintexas.legistar.com it is austintexas).
Keywords	RFP, software, grant	Phrases work: body-worn camera.
Days back / ahead	7 / 30	Meeting date window.
Only new matches	on for schedules	Remembers reported items between runs.
Exclude personal matters	on	Skips items that can name private individuals.
Legistar API token	optional	Only for the few governments that require one.

Output example

{
  "client": "austintexas",
  "body": "City Council",
  "meetingDate": "2026-11-05",
  "matchedKeywords": ["software", "contract"],
  "itemTitle": "Authorize a contract for Infor Public Sector software maintenance and support ...",
  "matterFile": "26-1234",
  "agendaPdfUrl": "https://austintexas.legistar1.com/...Agenda.pdf",
  "meetingUrl": "https://austintexas.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?..."
}

Pricing

Pay per event: a small charge per meeting scanned and per matching agenda item returned. You pay only for what the run actually finds. Typical run: 2 cities, 30 days, a few cents.

Tips

• Schedule it daily or weekly with Only new matches on, and add an email or Slack integration.
• Start broad (contract), then narrow (software maintenance) once you see the volume.
• If a government returns "Unknown Legistar client name", check the subdomain of its Legistar site. Not every government uses Legistar.

Data and fair use

Uses the public Legistar Web API at about one request per second. Returns public government agenda text and links only. Not affiliated with Granicus or any government. Agenda content can change until a meeting is held; always confirm against the official agenda.

Support

Open an issue on this Actor's Issues tab. Replies within 24 hours.