We know that some of you are not happy about the Summerland Gazette, and we want to respond openly instead of staying quiet.
First, what we are and are not. Our aim is not to criticize the District but to make it easier to follow. We will say so when the District does something well, and we will say so when something could have been explained more clearly. We plan to hold everyone to the same standard, including ourselves.
Second, how we work. We use AI to help find and read the District’s bylaws and policies, and to help summarize recorded council meetings. We use it because we are a small operation, and a two-hour meeting would otherwise take days to write up by hand. For meetings, we transcribe the recording, ask AI to summarize the transcript, and then a person reviews the summary before it is published. For policies, we read the policy itself and link to it. AI can make mistakes, especially with names, numbers, and exact wording, so every summary links to the full recording and transcript so you can check anything that matters to you.
We know that many people are wary of AI, and given how it has been used elsewhere, that caution is reasonable. We also know that a civic information site has to earn trust, and that we haven’t earned yours yet. We haven’t published our first summaries, so we hope you will judge us on those and not on a label.
You don’t need to take our word for anything. Every summary will link directly to the council recording and to the original bylaws and policies, so you can check our work against the source. If we get something wrong, please tell us, and we will correct it publicly.
We respect that Summerland Locals is a private group and that its members decide how it runs. We aren’t asking for anything from it. We simply hope that you will read what we publish and judge it on its accuracy and usefulness. If it falls short, we want to hear that too.