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Trustees direct staff to pilot 'Ask Ed' AI chatbot to make village rules and services easier to search
Summary
A trustee‑proposed AI chatbot pilot would connect village documents and databases to a searchable interface to help residents find zoning rules, budget numbers and event information; staff described data and PDF ingestion limits and asked departments to prioritize datasets for an initial pilot.
Trustees directed staff to proceed with exploratory work on an AI‑based website chatbot (branded in discussion as “Ask Ed”) designed to make village documents and services easier for residents to find.
A trustee who proposed the tool said the chatbot is being piloted by a vendor the trustee works with and has already been trained to locate zoning and ordinance materials, event calendars and other webpage content. Staff cautioned that some PDFs—especially tables in budget documents—are hard for off‑the‑shelf AI to ingest and suggested exporting key departmental data (for example, from police, finance and public works) into CSV files on a regular schedule as a practical first step. Trustees and staff discussed staffing for upkeep and a schedule (quarterly or yearly exports) to keep the chatbot’s dataset current.
Trustees and staff noted two important guardrails: the tool should be clearly presented as an aid (not an official legal interpretation) and residents should be told to verify answers; and staff identified that FOIA and privacy‑sensitive records must be excluded or handled carefully. Trustees suggested the tool could reduce routine phone inquiries and help residents find building‑code or zoning answers that currently require staff time. Several trustees said they themselves use ChatGPT and welcomed a village‑specific, pre‑trained interface for frequently asked questions and common forms.
Staff will collect department priorities for which data and documents to make searchable, identify a staff point person to maintain the dataset, and evaluate technical ingestion or conversion of PDFs and other resources into formats AI can reliably query. No formal procurement or contract award was made at the meeting.
