Policy comparison matrices

One matrix per policy area, comparing what each faction on the council proposes — and what it did when it had the chance — against our proposal.

Built by /compare-council <area>. None exist yet; the first arrives with the first policy area.

File format

<policy-area>.md, matching the policy/<area>/ slug. Frontmatter:

---
policy-area: example-area
election: 2024
last-verified: 2026-08-10
sources-cutoff: 2026-08-10   # material published after this date is not reflected
---

Required sections

1. Scope — the specific questions the matrix compares on (the rows). Chosen before filling in the columns, so the rows are not gerrymandered to favour a predetermined winner.

2. Rating scale — if cells are rated, the scale defined explicitly. Suggested default:

   Symbol	Meaning
   ●●	Concrete commitment with a named mechanism (bylaw, budget line, tender clause, council decision)
   ●	Commitment stated, mechanism unspecified
   ○	Mentioned as an aspiration only
   —	No stated position
   ✗	Actively opposes

   The distinction that does the work is ●● vs ●: “we will clean up the neighbourhood” is ●; “we will amend bylaw X to require Y, funded from budget line Z” is ●●. Most municipal campaign material is ● or ○, and the matrix should show that plainly rather than inflating it.

3. The matrix — rows are the scope questions, columns are the council factions plus a final column for this project. Cells carry the rating and a short quoted or closely-paraphrased position, with a footnote to the source document.

4. The voting record — a second matrix, and at municipal level the more important one. Council votes are recorded in the protocols, they are recent, and they concern the actual instruments in play. What a faction voted for is better evidence of its position than anything it published. Where the vote and the platform conflict, show both and say which is which; note where a vote was bound by coalition discipline.

5. The deliverability row — for each column, how many of that faction’s commitments in this area are class A/B/C/D against our jurisdiction map. A faction promising things no municipality can do is a factual finding about that platform, and it is checkable. It applies to our column too, and this row is the one most likely to be uncomfortable for us.

6. Gap analysis — the payoff section. Which of our proposals are:

   • Already adopted or already funded → drop, or reframe as implementation and enforcement
   • Already promised by others → not distinctive; either adopt their framing and credit it, or explain what ours adds
   • Genuinely unaddressed → the core of the paper
   • Actively opposed by a bloc → costed politically against the council arithmetic; the paper needs to answer their objection specifically

   Also the inverse: proposals other factions make that we have not considered and should.

7. Sources — every position traced to a document (protocol, motion, campaign page, budget vote) with a reference and an access date. Where a faction has published nothing on the subject and moved no motion, say so explicitly — absence of policy is a finding, not a blank cell.

Honesty constraints

• Fill in every faction’s column from its own material and its own votes first. Journalistic characterisation is a fallback, flagged as such.
• Read the Hebrew original. Council protocols and most municipal campaign material exist in Hebrew only, and a faction’s English-language material, where it exists at all, is written for a different audience.
• Expect thin material. Municipal factions publish far less than national parties; record the thinness rather than filling the gap with inference about what they probably think.
• Do not conflate a faction with the coalition it sits in.
• A faction you disagree with on everything else may have the best instrument in one row. Record it.