Stay ahead of planning and zoning
Small-town planning commissions move fast and their sites are terrible. By the time a notable variance, zoning change, or project hearing hits the news, the decision has usually already been made in a commission meeting most people didn’t see the agenda for.
This ability watches the towns your team follows — Atherton, Portola Valley, Woodside, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, San Mateo, whatever you add — and reports what’s on deck for the parcels, developers, and item types your team is tracking.
What it does
- Crawls each watched municipality’s planning and zoning meeting pages every morning.
- Pulls agendas, staff reports, and supporting documents as they’re posted.
- Writes a short report on each relevant item: address, applicant, what they’re asking for, staff’s recommendation, and the two sentences of the 90-page packet that actually matter.
- Matches items against your team’s rules — parcels you’re tracking, developers you’re watching, item types (variances, use permits, subdivisions).
- Emails the right team members the moment something matches. Daily rollup for everything else.
The reveal
A Woodside planning agenda drops at 4pm Tuesday. By 4:05 your team has a report on the three items matching their tracked parcels — including a link to the 90-page staff report and the two sentences that actually matter.
What it doesn’t do
No price predictions. No market analysis. No guesses about how a hearing will go. It tells you what’s being asked and what staff said; your team brings the judgment.
Configuration
- Watched towns: municipality pages to crawl.
- Watch list: parcels, developers, applicants, item types.
- Notification rules: who gets pinged on a match vs. who gets the daily rollup.
Triggers
Runs daily by default (morning crawl of each watched municipality) and on-demand when a team member adds a new parcel or applicant to the watch list — backfills the last few months of relevant items so the team starts with history, not a blank page.