By Kershaw County, for Kershaw County

Kershaw County Council Recap is a community project, made by a neighbor, for neighbors. No hedge fund owns it, no out-of-town chain runs it, and nothing here is behind a paywall. The goal is simple: every resident - whether you're in Camden, Lugoff, Elgin, Bethune, Liberty Hill, or anywhere in between - should be able to know exactly what your county council decided and how each member voted, without sitting through a three-hour meeting.

It stays free because local businesses and readers keep it running: sponsors get a single, clearly-labeled line in each issue. That's the whole business model - community supported, community focused.

How it's made

Each issue is built from the county's official published minutes (the authoritative record of every roll-call vote), with software that extracts each vote and verifies the tallies programmatically before a word of summary is written. When minutes aren't out yet, some issues are prepared from the county's public meeting video, and are labeled accordingly. Every issue cites its source.

The county's documents, made searchable

Kershaw County publishes its meeting minutes and agenda packets as PDF files - often scans - that cannot be word-searched. You can't open the county's agenda and search for your road, your neighborhood, or a project name. So this site transcribes every one of those files, page by page, and publishes the text alongside each meeting in the archive - the recap, the full meeting transcript, the transcribed minutes, and the transcribed agenda packet, all searchable, all in one place, all free. These transcriptions are machine-made and fully automated: documents are transcribed by neural networks, and the meeting transcript comes from the live stream's automatic captions - so occasional transcription errors are possible. The county's original PDFs on kershaw.sc.gov remain the authoritative record.

Who runs this

Kershaw County Council Recap is owned and operated by Wateree Media LLC, an independent local media company serving Kershaw County, South Carolina. It is not affiliated with Kershaw County government, and not with any political party or campaign. You can reach us any time at [email protected] or through the contact page.

Corrections & feedback

This site is a work in progress and is always being improved, and it's built to be a community resource - so your corrections and ideas are exactly what we want. If you spot an error anywhere - a recap, a vote, a name, or a transcription - or you have a feature idea, use the feedback form (or email [email protected]). You can also see what's being worked on, and what's already shipped, on the roadmap. Getting it right matters more than getting it first.