Cuyahoga County Council scraper is broken

[skorasaurus]

Reported by Kate W. in the documenters Open House

on the documenters.org ; there are no meetings listed for Cuyahoga County Council.

The documenters url for county council is
https://cleveland.documenters.org/agencies/cuyahoga-county-council-209/
and upcoming County Council meetings should be listed there... but they are not. .

The scraper is specifically using an API from county council's website - http://council.cuyahogacounty.us/api/items/GetItemsByType?itemTypeCode=EVENT;NEWS;EVENTREG&languageCd=en-US&siteKey=141&returnEventsAfterDate=06/05/2020&returnEventsBeforeDate=12/02/2020
to obtain results and all of the meetings that returned happened this summer.

Looking at the county council website, there's no meetings listed ?! http://council.cuyahogacounty.us/en-US/events-calendar.aspx

[skorasaurus]

I've emailed the county council to find out why the meetings aren't listed or if it's a technical issue.

[pjsier]

Sounds good! Definitely update here. From what I can tell that's the only place we can pull them, but it should start pulling them once they post them again

[skorasaurus]

It appears that http://council.cuyahogacounty.us/ itself may be the most opportune place to scrape from

I sent them an email to confirm if that will be the only place that they will be post information.

There is also an icalendar link - http://council.cuyahogacounty.us/RSSFeed.aspx?format=iCal&DATE=ITEM_EVENT_START_DATE&HEAD=HEADER&FUTURE=YES&TYPECD=EVENT;NEWS;EVENTREG - that contains (used https://icalendar.org/ to scope out its contents) but I didn't compare it to http://council.cuyahogacounty.us/

[skorasaurus]

The county replied back to me; looks like upcoming events, we should use the homepage - http://council.cuyahogacounty.us/en-US/home.aspx for scraping the meetings.

I've included their replies below:

I have copied Janine Carter from our Clerk’s Office to see if she can assist you with your questions regarding the Council calendar.

I am of this initiative and I applaud efforts to get citizens more involved in government. I know you want to get people involved in live meetings but I also wanted you to know that we do archive all of our regular meetings and committee meetings on Youtube.
Take care.
Joe

County Council Regular meetings are held on the second and fourth Tuesday of every month. Due to COVID-19, the regular meetings have been held at 2:00 p.m. and they are livestreamed on the County YouTube page. The remaining regular meetings for 2020 are:

9/29, 10/13, 10/27, 11/10, 11/24 and 12/8.

County Council Committee meetings are typically held the week after the regular meetings on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays at the discretion of the Committee chairs. The meetings and agendas are posted 48 business hours in advance on Council’s website. You can access the meetings and agendas on the homepage under the “Upcoming Meetings & Events” or by navigating to “Meetings > Council Meeting Archive” and by navigating to “Meetings>Council Committees> select the Committee name from the list.” I’ve also included the following links:
List of Council Committees

http://council.cuyahogacounty.us/en-US/council-committees.aspx

Council Committee Assignments

http://council.cuyahogacounty.us/pdf_council/en-US/2019%20and%202020%20Committee%20Assignments%20(Updated).pdf

Council Home Page

http://council.cuyahogacounty.us/en-US/home.aspx

Council Meeting Archive

http://council.cuyahogacounty.us/en-US/Council-Meetings.aspx

I hope that this helps. Please let me know if you have any additional questions or concerns.