New York City Council · hearing record Back to search · Methodology

Ask the record a question

The search on this site matches words. To ask the hearing record something in plain language — who objected to this, what did the agency promise, has anyone raised it before — put it into Google NotebookLM and ask there.

Markdown packs · updated with each build

Two ways in

Start from a search. Run a search on the front page, narrow it with the committee, date and speaker filters, then press Download for NotebookLM. You get one Markdown file containing every matching exchange with the turns either side of it, and a Legistar link for each hearing. This is usually the better route: a tight, relevant source beats a large one.

Or take a whole committee. Build a pack below and you get the complete transcripts and written testimony for one committee, split into parts where a committee's record is too long for a single source. The pack is assembled in your browser out of the same text the search runs on.

Putting a pack into NotebookLM

  1. Go to notebooklm.google.com and create a notebook.
  2. Add source, choose the Markdown file you downloaded, and upload it.
  3. Ask your question in plain language. NotebookLM cites the passage it drew on, and each hearing in the pack carries its Legistar link so you can check the answer against the original document.

A notebook holds 50 sources on the free tier and 300 on the paid tier, and each source is capped at roughly 500,000 words. The packs are cut to sit under the word limit, but the whole hearing record is far past what one notebook will hold — add the committees you care about rather than everything. Google may change these limits; if an upload is refused, that is why.

NotebookLM answers only from the sources you give it, but it is still a language model and it will occasionally get a detail wrong. Follow its citation back to the Legistar document before you quote anything.

Packs by committee
CommitteeHearingsWordsFilesCovers

Packs are assembled in your browser from the same text the search uses, so nothing is downloaded until you ask for it. A large committee takes a few seconds and arrives as more than one file, each one under the per-source word limit.

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