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High‑school volunteers present Open Governance platform to Walnut Creek council, ask city to link tool on website
Summary
Students from the Open Governance (OpGov) volunteer team presented a civic‑information platform that summarizes meetings and transcripts; they asked the council to consider adding a free OpGov link on the city's site and described use of AI for transcription and summaries.
Two student volunteers representing Open Governance (OpGov) addressed the Walnut Creek City Council on Aug. 5 to describe their volunteer platform that summarizes city and school board meetings and to request that the city consider linking the free tool on its website.
Harika Thrani, identified as OpGov content manager and a senior at California High School in San Ramon, said the platform provides summaries, speaker names, meeting videos and transcripts so residents can find not only who spoke but what was said. Thrani told the council that Walnut Creek’s $158 million budget is shared by more than 46,000 voters and that many residents find it difficult to locate or understand government decisions; OpGov’s volunteer team, she said, spends several hours a week producing readable summaries to improve transparency and civic engagement.
A second volunteer, Mihika, identified as a student at Dougherty Valley High School, emphasized the project’s volunteer nature and requested that the council and city add an OpGov link to the city website to increase resident access. When a council member asked whether OpGov uses AI for transcripts and summaries, the students confirmed that they use AI tools to produce transcriptions and condensed summaries for the website.
City staff and council members thanked the students for the work and discussed practicalities: staff said the city would make an administrative connection for other public inquiries (for example, how to report short‑term rentals), and the students said they have summaries posted for January 2025 and invited council feedback.
The presentation took place during the public comment portion of the meeting and was received as public testimony; no council action was taken during the meeting to formally integrate the tool into the city website.
