Local government records, made easier to understand.

Deb Tracker focuses on information connected to Deb Stuart's official role as Mason City Manager and the work of city government. It is not intended to document someone's private life or collect unrelated personal information.

Deb Tracker is built primarily from publicly available source material, including records published by the City of Mason and source-backed news coverage.

Every record and news article included in Deb Tracker is source-backed and connected to the underlying public record or original published source so residents can review where the information came from themselves.

Residents who would rather not use AI can use Explore instead.

Deb Tracker is part of a larger experiment I am conducting through Townstoria: can locally focused technology make public information easier for a community to use?

I previously owned and operated Mason Today, a local newspaper serving the Mason area. That experience gave me a close look at both the value of local information and the amount of useful material that never reaches most residents simply because someone has to find it, read it, organize it and explain where it came from.

Today, instead of rebuilding a traditional newspaper, I am experimenting with a different approach. Townstoria uses public records, local data, software and carefully controlled uses of artificial intelligence to explore new ways of providing useful, source-backed information at the community level.

Deb Tracker is intentionally focused. Rather than attempting to summarize everything happening in local government, it creates a searchable historical record around one important public office and allows residents to explore that record themselves.

Deb Tracker is run by Josh Curtis, a longtime Mason resident and former owner and operator of Mason Today.

Deb Tracker and Townstoria are independently operated. They are not affiliated with, operated by, endorsed by or produced on behalf of the City of Mason or Deb Stuart.

The City of Mason and other public agencies may be sources of records displayed or referenced by the project, but they do not control the presentation of those records on Townstoria.

Artificial intelligence is a tool used in parts of the Townstoria system. It is not intended to be the source of the underlying facts. Depending on the feature, AI may help identify information inside large documents, organize records, improve search, identify relationships between records or produce a source-grounded response to a question.

Townstoria also uses deterministic software and validation rules designed to prevent unsupported information from being published as fact. No system is perfect, which is why Deb Tracker is designed around source-backed records rather than AI-generated narratives.

Public records can be complicated. Documents can be amended, links can change, information can be entered incorrectly and automated systems can occasionally misinterpret a record. Corrections are welcome.

When contacting Townstoria about a record, including the page, date, source document or specific statement you are referring to will make it easier to investigate.