Council approves pilot with Cornell AI center to make city records searchable

The Common Council unanimously approved a resolution to begin a collaboration with Cornell’s Center for AI Innovation (DICE) to ingest and OCR digitized city records to make them more searchable and accessible to the public and council members. Councilor Kiel summarized committee work on the item and emphasized that the pilot is an experiment with low upfront cost to the city and potential to improve access to historical ordinances, minutes, and supporting documents.

City staff explained the project will complement a new "track back" feature in the city’s e‑code portal (eCode360) that allows users to trace ordinance amendments and view prior ordinance language. The proposed Cornell partnership would add smart search capabilities over meeting minutes, agendas, resolutions, and other documents, subject to future implementation decisions.

Councilors described the effort as a useful local experiment that leverages university resources; staff said implementation details and next steps will follow after the initial phase.