https://thecommonnews.com Fresh civic summaries, local government updates, and product writing from The Common News. en-us Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://app.thecommonnews.com/summary/chicago-il-2026-05-18-committee-on-contracting-oversight-and-equity-may-18-2026-approvals-on-mbe-wbe-tracking-workforce-equity-board-and-pro https://app.thecommonnews.com/summary/chicago-il-2026-05-18-committee-on-contracting-oversight-and-equity-may-18-2026-approvals-on-mbe-wbe-tracking-workforce-equity-board-and-pro Chicago: The Committee approved a Rule 45 report for Jan–Apr 2026, passed ordinances to create an online MBE/WBE utilization tracking database and to establish the Chicago Construction Wor… Chicago Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://app.thecommonnews.com/summary/new-york-ny-2026-05-14-new-york-city-council-stated-meeting-may-14-2026-consent-agenda-land-use-approvals-multiple-introductions-referred https://app.thecommonnews.com/summary/new-york-ny-2026-05-14-new-york-city-council-stated-meeting-may-14-2026-consent-agenda-land-use-approvals-multiple-introductions-referred New York City: Stated meeting of the New York City Council held May 14, 2026 at 1:30 PM in Council Chambers, City Hall. Quorum present (48 present, 3 absent). The Council adopted a consent agend… New York City Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://app.thecommonnews.com/summary/atlanta-ga-2026-05-13-finance-executive-committee-may-13-2026-adopts-agenda-forwards-bond-items-favors-donations-and-refunds-holds-fy2027-bu https://app.thecommonnews.com/summary/atlanta-ga-2026-05-13-finance-executive-committee-may-13-2026-adopts-agenda-forwards-bond-items-favors-donations-and-refunds-holds-fy2027-bu Atlanta: The City of Atlanta Finance/Executive Committee met May 13, 2026 (1:30 PM–2:29 PM). The committee unanimously adopted the agenda and approved prior minutes. Members voted favorabl… Atlanta Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://devinthakker.com/blog/common-news-data-model https://devinthakker.com/blog/common-news-data-model How I think about the core data model behind The Common News: municipalities, meetings, agendas, summaries, entities, and the relationships that turn messy civic documents into structured product surfaces. Blog Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://devinthakker.com/blog/local-government-seo-specificity https://devinthakker.com/blog/local-government-seo-specificity Why local government content rarely wins through broad keywords alone, and how entity-rich civic pages, geographic specificity, and structured publishing make long-tail search the real opportunity. Blog Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://devinthakker.com/blog/common-news-ai-summary-trust https://devinthakker.com/blog/common-news-ai-summary-trust How I approach trust at The Common News: source grounding, scoped summarization, human-readable structure, and product decisions designed to make AI-generated civic coverage more reliable. Blog Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://devinthakker.com/blog/common-news-local-seo-system https://devinthakker.com/blog/common-news-local-seo-system A breakdown of the SEO system I built for The Common News: canonical summary URLs, structured metadata, entity-driven local relevance, server-rendered civic content, and municipality-level internal linking. Blog Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://devinthakker.com/blog/chicago-budget-rag https://devinthakker.com/blog/chicago-budget-rag A practical build log of creating a public-facing RAG app over large municipal budget PDFs, with source citations, embedded document viewing, quality tuning, and production deployment. Blog Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://devinthakker.com/blog/why-i-built-the-common-news https://devinthakker.com/blog/why-i-built-the-common-news Why I built The Common News, the problem we saw with local government information delivery, and how we are making civic updates easier to follow. Blog Tue, 13 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT