Use Civic Agent on your site
Readers ask the same few questions about local government. Each piece below answers one of them, right on your page, free. We keep it current from the public record, and it takes no side.
What your readers can ask
“What is my city deciding soon?”
A list of upcoming votes and hearings, soonest first, with the date to act.
Homepage rail, civic section
“Tell me more about this vote.”
One decision in plain words: what changes, who it reaches, and what’s next. A strip, a sidebar box, or a full card.
Under a headline, beside a story
“How can I add my voice?”
When and where to speak, how to send a written comment, and what the board can weigh. Printable.
End of a story before a hearing
- New
“What will it cost me?”
A small calculator for a bond, fee or bill. The reader’s number stays on their phone. Parowan library bond and Cedar City water bills for now.
Bond and budget stories
- New
“Where does this stand now?”
One line that updates itself after the vote or a correction, so older stories stay right.
Top or bottom of any story about a decision
- New
“What did they decide, and how did each member vote?”
Recent results by body, or one decision’s vote, member by member. Never a scorecard.
Results stories, meeting recaps
“Who governs my address, and what seats are open?”
An address box naming every body that governs it, and a list of board seats to fill with how to apply.
Civic guide pages, election coverage
Coming soon
Want one of these? Ask us, and we’ll build it sooner.
- One town at a time, and this week’s meetings. Decisions ahead for just Parowan or Enoch, and a list of every meeting this week with its agenda.
- Each side’s case. The arguments for and against a contested decision, from the record, on their own for explainers and opinion pages.
The terms
- Free. No fee, no sign-up, no contract. Watching one city costs about $1,000 a month, mostly an editor’s time checking each page. Jeff Swift pays it for now.
- Shown as is. You can't edit, reorder, or restyle a card. That's what lets every reader trust it's the same everywhere.
- Corrections reach you on their own. A fixed page updates everywhere it's shown, and every correction is listed on our About page and in a feed.
- No tracking of your readers. Cards set no cookies and run no ads. We count only totals: how many times each card loads, and which sites show it. Nothing about any one reader is kept. What a reader types stays in the card.
- Your newsletter, not ours. Add your own signup link and every piece gets one quiet line under it pointing there. Cards never ask your readers to sign up for anything of ours.
- Your reporting stays yours. Cards never quote your stories. A decision's page can link to stories about it from any outlet, yours included: use “Add your story” on that page, or email us the link.
- Label it as Civic Agent. Cards carry their own name. If you use the feeds in your own layout, say the information comes from Civic Agent, not your newsroom.
These terms are part of our charter, which any future owner or partner must keep.
A picture with your story
Every decision we follow as a picture: the map, what’s being decided, the dates, any result, and the address of its full page. Use the wide one as the story’s photo (one button copies the link, alt text, credit and caption for your editor), or paste the HTML into an article body that takes it. It works in email newsletters too, with no frame and nothing for your web team to switch on. Get the pictures.
This week's tip sheet
Every upcoming hearing and deadline, biggest stakes first, with the documents, the contacts, and the questions the public record doesn't answer yet. Those questions are good places to start reporting.
Open the tip sheet (it prints on a page or two).
Meeting preview kits
Every meeting ahead as a fact sheet: the big items and why, where each sits in the packet, the money lines, who to call, and what the notice leaves out. Facts with sources, for your own preview story. See the meetings ahead.
Document finder
Search every agenda packet, staff report and set of minutes the bodies we watch post, to the page: a street, a company, “water rights”. Open the document finder.
Story tips by email
The day a big item lands on an Iron County agenda, your desk gets one email: what it is, who pays, the documents, who to call, and what the notice doesn’t say yet. Pick words to watch, and you hear when a new document mentions them. You also hear when a posted agenda changes: items added late or taken off, a time moved, a meeting canceled. Every newsroom gets the same email at the same time. Free.
Calendar and feeds
- Calendar of every hearing, vote and deadline: subscribe, or add
https://civicagent.org/cal/iron-county.icsto any calendar by URL. Each decision page also has its own calendar file. - New and decided items (RSS):
https://civicagent.org/feeds/decisions.xml - Corrections (RSS):
https://civicagent.org/feeds/corrections.xml - The data behind the lists (JSON):
/embed/ahead.json,/embed/decided.json,/embed/seats.json, and one record per decision at/data/decisions/<id>.json(list:index.json). Ids never change. - Every decision as a spreadsheet (CSV):
/data/decisions.csv. Body, stage, date, result and the plain-language fields, for year-end and trend stories. Results only, not member-by-member votes.
Questions
Email hello@civicagent.org. Civic Agent is a People’s Lobby project by Jeff Swift, PhD, who also edits the Iron County Daily News, which shows Civic Agent pages. That site gets the cards, story tips and alerts at the same time and on the same terms as every other outlet, with nothing extra. More about who runs it.
Last updated November 4, 2026.