Terms of Service

The Village Record gathers what local governments publish (meetings, votes, budgets, ordinances, notices and related public data) and makes it easier to find and understand. Ask the Village answers questions from that record and, where it helps, from the web.

We are independent. The Village Record is not an official record of any village, municipality or other government, and nothing here is legal, financial, tax or professional advice. The official documents, which we link to, govern.

Ask the Village uses AI models to read the record and write answers. Answers can be incomplete, out of date or wrong, including figures, dates and who said what. Check the linked sources before you rely on an answer, and do not use the service as the sole basis for legal, financial, safety or medical decisions.

You need an account to ask questions or manage email alerts. You must be at least 18, give accurate information, and keep your password and any private connection links secret. You are responsible for activity on your account. Business plans are for the person or organization named on the account.

Free accounts include a limited number of questions each month. Paid plans (Individual and Business) are billed monthly or yearly in advance through Stripe and renew automatically until you cancel. Each plan includes a monthly usage allowance; credits add more and do not expire while you have a paid plan. Prices and allowances are shown on the site and may change with notice before your next renewal.

You can cancel anytime from your account page. Cancelling stops the next renewal; you keep your plan until the end of the period you paid for. Upgrades take effect at once and are charged the prorated difference. Except where the law requires, payments and credits are not refundable. If a payment fails we may pause paid features until it is resolved.

The Research plan is for non-commercial research, teaching and study: universities and colleges, their faculty and students, nonprofit research organizations, and independent researchers. It may not be used by or on behalf of a business, or for any commercial purpose, including consulting or client work, sales, lending, real estate, or building a commercial product. If we find an account using the Research plan for commercial purposes, we may move it to the Business plan or close it.

Research has no subscription and nothing renews. It starts with a one-time allowance of free questions; after that you buy credits, which are used only as you ask and do not expire. Research is priced to cover our overhead costs, and its prices may change with notice. Except where the law requires, credits are not refundable.

Do not misuse the service: no unlawful use, no attempts to get around usage limits or security, no automated scraping or reselling of the service, no uploading content you have no right to share or that is unlawful, and no using answers to harass or harm anyone. We may suspend or close accounts that break these terms.

You keep ownership of the questions you ask and the files you upload. You give us permission to process them to provide the service, as described in the Privacy Policy. Our content, design and code, apart from the public records themselves, belong to us.

Payments are processed by Stripe; hosting, AI models and email by Amazon Web Services. Links and web results lead to sites we do not control. Public records remain subject to their publishers' terms.

Meeting videos are YouTube videos, listed through YouTube API Services and played in YouTube's own player. By watching them here you agree to the YouTube Terms of Service, and what the player collects is covered by the Google Privacy Policy.

This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.

County unemployment figures come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics through its public data API, with the date they were retrieved. BLS.gov cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from BLS.gov.

Paths, parks and other map features come from OpenStreetMap: © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License.

Other public data, such as crime counts from the FBI's Crime Data Explorer, flood zones from FEMA and property sales from the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, is read through those agencies' public services under their terms. No agency endorses this site.

The service is provided as is, without warranties of accuracy, completeness or availability, to the fullest extent the law allows. Our total liability for any claim relating to the service is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim. We are not liable for indirect or consequential losses.

We may update these terms; if a change is material we will tell you by email or on the site before it takes effect. You may stop using the service and close your account at any time by writing to us. These terms are governed by Wisconsin law, with any dispute heard in Dane County, Wisconsin.

Questions about these terms: hello@villagerecord.org.