# croton.news — Croton-on-Hudson, NY Local News

> Comprehensive LLM-readable documentation for croton.news
> For the shorter version, see https://croton.news/llms.txt

## About

croton.news is an independent, AI-assisted civic information project covering the Village of
Croton-on-Hudson, New York (population ~8,200, Westchester County, 35 miles north of Manhattan).
The site publishes news articles and meeting coverage generated from public records, official
meeting transcripts, and government documents using AI-assisted journalism workflows.

- 225 published articles generated from 385 public meetings
- 1426 tracked entities (people, organizations, places)
- 37 government committees and boards covered
- Coverage period: September 2024 to present
- Updated daily as new meetings are transcribed and published

## How It Works

1. Public meetings are recorded and transcribed (YouTube recordings, audio files)
2. Transcripts are chunked and indexed in a RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) database
3. AI generates long-form articles from transcript chunks, with citations to specific timestamps
4. Articles include quick summaries, full narrative coverage, and links to source transcripts
5. Named entities (people, organizations, places) are automatically extracted and cross-linked
6. Topics are tracked across multiple meetings to show policy threads over time

## Site Pages

### Main Navigation
- Homepage: https://croton.news/ — Latest articles, weather, upcoming meetings
- Meetings: https://croton.news/meetings — All covered meetings by committee and date
- Editorials: https://croton.news/editorials — AI-generated long-form investigative pieces
- Calendar: https://croton.news/calendar — Upcoming village meetings and events
- Topics: https://croton.news/topics — Policy topics tracked across meetings
- Entities: https://croton.news/entities — People, organizations, and places mentioned in coverage
- Documents: https://croton.news/documents — Meeting packets and source PDFs
- Search: https://croton.news/search — Full-text search across all articles and transcripts
- Gallery: https://croton.news/gallery — Community photo gallery
- About: https://croton.news/about — Project description and methodology
- Contact: https://croton.news/contact — Contact form
- Editorial Policy: https://croton.news/editorial-policy — Transparency and sourcing standards

### History Archive
A curated historical section covering Croton-on-Hudson from pre-colonial times to the 20th century:
- History Home: https://croton.news/history — Overview and featured stories
- Timeline: https://croton.news/history/timeline — Interactive chronological timeline
- Historical Maps: https://croton.news/history/maps — Annotated historical maps
- Historical Documents: https://croton.news/history/documents — Primary source documents
- Stories: https://croton.news/history/stories — 27 narrative essays on local history
- McDonald Interviews: https://croton.news/history/mcdonald — 232 oral history transcripts
- Search: https://croton.news/history/search — Search across all historical content

### History Stories (27 essays)
- The Cannon at Teller's Point: https://croton.news/history/story/01_cannon_tellers_point
- The Fifteen-Year Revenge: https://croton.news/history/story/02_fifteen_year_revenge
- Nimham's Last Stand: https://croton.news/history/story/03_nimham_last_stand
- The Grape King of Senasqua: https://croton.news/history/story/04_grape_king_senasqua
- Little Italy and the Dam: https://croton.news/history/story/05_little_italy_dam
- The Westchester Tea Party: https://croton.news/history/story/06_westchester_tea_party
- Slavery at the Patriots' Manor: https://croton.news/history/story/07_slavery_patriots_manor
- The Other Harmon: https://croton.news/history/story/08_other_harmon
- Five Lives of Croton Point: https://croton.news/history/story/09_five_lives_croton_point
- Prohibition's Wild Croton: https://croton.news/history/story/10_prohibitions_wild_croton
- Croton in Poetry: https://croton.news/history/story/11_croton_poems
- Brinton Brook Sanctuary: https://croton.news/history/story/12_brinton_brook
- Croton Gorge Park: https://croton.news/history/story/13_croton_gorge_park
- Teatown Lake Reservation: https://croton.news/history/story/14_teatown
- Oscawana Island: https://croton.news/history/story/15_oscawana
- Blue Mountain Reservation: https://croton.news/history/story/16_blue_mountain
- Croton Landing Park: https://croton.news/history/story/17_croton_landing
- George's Island Park: https://croton.news/history/story/18_georges_island
- Old Croton Aqueduct Trail: https://croton.news/history/story/19_aqueduct_trail
- Original Research Collection: https://croton.news/history/story/20_original_research
- The Tea Captain: https://croton.news/history/story/21_tea_captain
- The Sacrifice at Pines Bridge: https://croton.news/history/story/22_pines_bridge
- Mosier's Fight: https://croton.news/history/story/23_mosiers_fight
- The Burning of Crompond: https://croton.news/history/story/24_crompond_burning
- Bearmore the Bear: https://croton.news/history/story/25_bearmore
- Tim Knapp's Croton: https://croton.news/history/story/26_tim_knapp
- The Cornell Dam Strike: https://croton.news/history/story/27_cornell_dam_strike

## Committees Covered

- Advisory Board on the Visual Environment
- Advisory Board on the Visual Environment (VEB)
- Arts & Humanities Advisory Council
- Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee
- Bicycle-Pedestrian Committee
- Board Of Trustees
- Board of Education
- Board of Trustees Organizational Meeting
- Board of Trustees Work Session
- Broadcast Test Meeting
- CHUFSD Board of Education Candidate Forum 5/12/26
- Community Meeting: Con Ed Grand Street Project Q&A
- Conservation Advisory Council
- Croton History
- Fire Council
- Gouveia Park Project Meeting
- HEART Committee
- Half Moon Bay Bridge Reconstruction Project Webinar
- IDEA Advisory Committee
- Kaplan's Pond Town Hall Meeting
- LWV Candidates Forum
- Mayoral Candidates Forum - October 9, 2025
- NY Forward Town Hall Meeting
- Old Post Road Traffic Study Webinar
- Planning Board
- Police Advisory Committee
- Police Advisory Committee (PAC)
- Recreation Advisory Committee
- Regular Meeting
- School Board Election Coverage
- Sustainability Committee
- Trustee Candidates Forum - October 9, 2025
- Water Control Commission
- Waterfront Advisory Committee
- Waterfront Advisory Committee (WAC)
- Zoning Board of Appeals

## Recent Articles

### Croton-Harmon accepts audit as student data sharpens curriculum plans
- URL: https://croton.news/article/884
- Committee: Board of Education
- Date: 2026-10-15
- Summary: Expanded eighth-grade algebra access and plans for aligned K–5 math materials shaped the October 15 work session. Trustees also accepted the annual audit and corrective-action plan, 5–0.

### Trustees back Old Post Road safety work, seek smaller Gouveia Park first phase
- URL: https://croton.news/article/878
- Committee: Board of Trustees Work Session
- Date: 2026-10-14
- Summary: At the October 14 work session, Croton trustees gave informal direction to advance Old Post Road North crossings under existing funding, sought an affordable first Gouveia Park phase and a five-year parks needs list, and asked for a daylighting policy draft. They made no new park appropriation or daylighting rule.

### Planning Board defers Mindset sign, weighs cannabis zoning changes
- URL: https://croton.news/article/862
- Committee: Planning Board
- Date: 2026-10-13
- Summary: At its October 13 meeting, Croton’s Planning Board asked the Mindset dispensary to return with revised sign designs and did not approve the sign. It tabled a Grand Street art-studio application because the applicant was absent, discussed draft cannabis zoning recommendations without a vote, and accepted September 22 minutes with a correction.

### IDEA committee to discuss community and Heritage Month updates Friday
- URL: https://croton.news/article/842
- Committee: IDEA Advisory Committee
- Date: 2026-10-09
- Summary: The IDEA Advisory Committee is scheduled to meet Friday, October 9, at 2:45 p.m. Its posted agenda lists approval of June and July meeting minutes, liaison and community updates, Hispanic Heritage Month updates, and Lorraine Hansberry Coalition updates. These are planned discussion items, not reported decisions.

### Trustee candidates differ on transparency, housing growth and camera privacy
- URL: https://croton.news/article/861
- Committee: LWV Candidates Forum
- Date: 2026-10-08
- Summary: At the October 8 LWV forum, Mary Lynn Dlabola, Len Simon and Maria Slippen offered different approaches to public trust, development and license plate reader privacy. All three answered residents’ questions about affordability, infrastructure and village services.

### School board schedules Thursday special meeting for litigation discussion
- URL: https://croton.news/article/850
- Committee: Board of Education
- Date: 2026-10-08
- Summary: The Croton-Harmon school board is scheduled to meet Thursday, October 8, at 5 p.m. Its agenda proposes an executive session to discuss litigation, followed by a return to the special meeting and adjournment. These are planned steps, not reported votes.

### Mayor appoints Matthew Berger as trustees approve waterfront law, bridge resolutions
- URL: https://croton.news/article/836
- Committee: Board Of Trustees
- Date: 2026-10-07
- Summary: Croton trustees adopted a waterfront-review law and approved two Half Moon Bay Bridge agreement resolutions on October 7. Mayor Brian Pugh also announced Matthew Berger’s appointment to the vacant board seat; the swearing-in and several implementation steps remain ahead.

### Preliminary: Arts & Humanities Advisory Council — agenda for 2026-10-06
- URL: https://croton.news/article/849
- Committee: Arts & Humanities Advisory Council
- Date: 2026-10-06
- Summary: Preliminary agenda-only summary for the Arts & Humanities Advisory Council on 2026-10-06. This article will be enriched with full coverage when ChampDS publishes the meeting video.

### Waterfront panel to review cannabis dispensary zoning Tuesday
- URL: https://croton.news/article/835
- Committee: Waterfront Advisory Committee
- Date: 2026-10-06
- Summary: The October 6 Waterfront Advisory Committee agenda calls for a consistency review of proposed cannabis-dispensary zoning and a recommendation to trustees. The agenda also lists approval of draft minutes from September 16. The zoning proposal has not been adopted.

### When New York Threw a Party for Croton Water
- URL: https://croton.news/article/158
- Committee: Croton History
- Date: 2026-10-06
- Summary: October 14 marks 184 years since the 1842 Croton Water Celebration. Watch our new Croton Ode lyric film and explore the poem, the aqueduct and the historical score behind the anniversary.

### Preliminary: Recreation Advisory Committee — agenda for 2026-10-05
- URL: https://croton.news/article/843
- Committee: Recreation Advisory Committee
- Date: 2026-10-05
- Summary: Preliminary agenda-only summary for the Recreation Advisory Committee on 2026-10-05. This article will be enriched with full coverage when ChampDS publishes the meeting video.

### School Board Approves Facility Fees and Arts Waivers, Debates AI and Pre-K Advocacy
- URL: https://croton.news/article/801
- Committee: Board of Education
- Date: 2026-10-01
- Summary: At its October 1 meeting, the Croton-Harmon school board approved 2026–27 facility-use rates, arts-group facility fee waivers and a $130,000 year-end budget transfer. Trustees also discussed proposed statewide positions on AI and universal pre-K; those proposals are not new district rules.

### Croton trustees approve police study as Lounsbury resident presses water fix
- URL: https://croton.news/article/800
- Committee: Board Of Trustees
- Date: 2026-09-30
- Summary: A resident described rust-stained laundry while the village awaits county approval for Lounsbury Road water-main work. Trustees approved a $57,750 police study and pressed the state on Route 129 hazards. They set October 21 zoning hearings but did not adopt those proposed laws or the waterfront-law revision.

### Croton’s assistant village manager law took effect September 25
- URL: https://croton.news/article/807
- Committee: Topics
- Date: 2026-09-25
- Summary: Local Law 12 of 2026 establishes an assistant village manager position and acting-manager succession rules. Adopted September 16, it took effect when filed with New York State on September 25.

### Croton's rent-relief income limit rises to $75,000 as two local laws take effect
- URL: https://croton.news/article/762
- Committee: Topics
- Date: 2026-09-22
- Summary: Local Laws 10 and 11 of 2026 were filed with the New York Secretary of State on September 8 and took effect the same day. One raises the income limit for the village's senior-citizen and disabled-persons rent-relief programs from $50,000 to $75,000; the other redraws the list of sidewalks the village, not the adjoining owner, must clear of snow. Five more local laws are still only proposals.

### Planning Board approves Maple Commons shed and South Riverside parking changes
- URL: https://croton.news/article/683
- Committee: Planning Board
- Date: 2026-09-22
- Summary: The September 22 approvals require clearance around a Maple Commons drain and revise parking, landscaping and fencing at 352 South Riverside Avenue.

### Station charger work advances as Croton weighs firehouse and solar funding hurdles
- URL: https://croton.news/article/794
- Committee: Sustainability Committee
- Date: 2026-09-20
- Summary: Trench work began for the train-station EV chargers. Sustainability Committee minutes also reported that Croton would not receive a state firehouse roofing grant and described unresolved conditions for the DPW solar canopy.

### Croton-Harmon ends varsity football season; school board approves communications agreement
- URL: https://croton.news/article/734
- Committee: Board of Education
- Date: 2026-09-17
- Summary: The September 17 school-board meeting covered the football cancellation, a Rockland BOCES communications agreement and school plans for math, grading, schedules and literacy.

### Croton narrows where cannabis shops could open, creates assistant village manager post
- URL: https://croton.news/article/704
- Committee: Board Of Trustees
- Date: 2026-09-16
- Summary: Croton-on-Hudson trustees told the village attorney on Sept. 16 to draft cannabis zoning that would allow dispensaries by special permit in a handful of commercial and industrial pockets, and adopted a local law re-creating the position of assistant village manager, a post the village has not had since 2015.

### Zoning board legalizes gazebo and sunroom built without permits; garage plan held for a site visit
- URL: https://croton.news/article/703
- Committee: Zoning Board of Appeals
- Date: 2026-09-15
- Summary: The Zoning Board of Appeals granted variances legalizing a gazebo that survived a Newton Court house fire and a sunroom and storage shed at a Cleveland Drive house bought out of a reverse mortgage. A third application, to raise the roof of a garage that sits three feet from the lot lines on Hastings Avenue, was held open for a site visit after the owner did not appear.

## Topics

Policy topics are tracked across multiple meetings to show how issues evolve over time.

- Affordable Housing (Lot A) (58 meetings): https://croton.news/topic/affordable-housing-lot-a
- Leadership Succession (56 meetings): https://croton.news/topic/leadership-succession
- Electric Vehicles & Green Fleet (49 meetings): https://croton.news/topic/electric-vehicles-green-fleet
- Solar & Battery Storage (47 meetings): https://croton.news/topic/solar-battery-storage
- Curriculum & Academic Vision (44 meetings): https://croton.news/topic/curriculum-academic-vision
- School Budget & Tax Levy (35 meetings): https://croton.news/topic/school-budget-tax-levy
- Gouveia Park (35 meetings): https://croton.news/topic/gouveia-park
- Water Infrastructure (30 meetings): https://croton.news/topic/water-infrastructure
- Cannabis Dispensary Zoning (27 meetings): https://croton.news/topic/cannabis-dispensary-zoning
- UPK Funding & Expansion (24 meetings): https://croton.news/topic/upk-funding-expansion
- Village Budget 2026-2027 (24 meetings): https://croton.news/topic/village-budget-2026-2027
- Backyard Chicken Regulations (23 meetings): https://croton.news/topic/backyard-chicken-regulations
- Cell Phone Restrictions (22 meetings): https://croton.news/topic/cell-phone-restrictions
- Mount Airy Road Subdivision (22 meetings): https://croton.news/topic/mount-airy-road-subdivision
- Harmon Parking (21 meetings): https://croton.news/topic/harmon-parking
- Police Body Cameras (21 meetings): https://croton.news/topic/police-body-cameras
- Court Consolidation (13 meetings): https://croton.news/topic/court-consolidation
- Rental Registry (12 meetings): https://croton.news/topic/rental-registry
- Equity Policy & Antisemitism (9 meetings): https://croton.news/topic/equity-policy-antisemitism
- Short-Term Rental Tax (7 meetings): https://croton.news/topic/short-term-rental-tax

## APIs

### GET /api/articles
Returns recent articles as JSON array.
- Parameters:
  - limit (int, default 20): Number of articles to return
  - committee (string): Filter by committee slug (e.g., board-of-trustees)
- Response: Array of objects with id, headline, quick_summary, committee, date, article (full markdown)
- Example: GET https://croton.news/api/articles?limit=5

### GET /api/search
Full-text search across meeting transcripts.
- Parameters:
  - q (string, required): Search query
- Response: Array of transcript chunks with content, speaker, timestamps, committee, date, doc_id
- Example: GET https://croton.news/api/search?q=water+infrastructure

### GET /api/calendar/events
Returns upcoming village meetings and events.
- Response: Array of event objects

### GET /api/search/documents
Search across meeting packet documents and PDFs.
- Parameters:
  - q (string, required): Search query
- Response: Array of matching document sections

### GET /api/weather
Returns current weather for Croton-on-Hudson.

### GET /api/health
Service health check endpoint.
- Response: JSON with status, article count, latest article date

### GET /feed
RSS 2.0 feed of recent articles.
- Content-Type: application/rss+xml

## Data & Feeds

- RSS Feed: https://croton.news/feed
- Sitemap: https://croton.news/sitemap.xml
- News Sitemap: https://croton.news/news-sitemap.xml (Google News format)
- Robots: https://croton.news/robots.txt
- LLMs.txt: https://croton.news/llms.txt
- LLMs-full.txt: https://croton.news/llms-full.txt

## Article Structure

Each article page includes:
- Headline and quick summary (1-3 sentences)
- Full narrative article (typically 1,000-5,000 words)
- Committee name and meeting date
- Links to related articles from the same committee
- Entity mentions linked to entity profile pages
- Topic tags linked to topic thread pages
- Source transcript with timestamps (when available)
- Meeting packet documents (when available)
- NewsArticle JSON-LD structured data

## Technical Details

- Stack: Python/Flask, SQLite (RAG database), Jinja2 templates
- Hosting: Self-hosted on VPS behind nginx reverse proxy with SSL
- Search: SQLite FTS5 full-text search over transcript chunks
- NLP: Named entity recognition for people, organizations, and places
- AI: Article generation from transcripts using LLM pipelines
- Design: Newspaper-style layout with serif typography, warm color palette

## FAQ

### Is croton.news affiliated with the Village of Croton-on-Hudson?
No. croton.news is an independent project. All content is derived from publicly available records.

### How are articles generated?
Articles are generated by AI from official meeting transcripts. Each article cites specific
timestamps and speakers from the source recording. Human editorial review ensures accuracy.

### How often is the site updated?
New articles are published within days of public meetings being held. The site covers meetings
from the Board of Trustees, Planning Board, Zoning Board, and 20+ other committees.

### Can I use the API?
Yes. The articles API and search API are free and open. No authentication required.
Please be respectful with request frequency.

### What is the McDonald Interview collection?
232 oral history transcripts collected by local historian Mary McDonald, documenting
personal stories and memories of Croton-on-Hudson residents across decades.

### What topics does the History section cover?
27 narrative essays covering the American Revolution in Croton, the Croton Dam construction,
Prohibition-era bootlegging, Native American history, local parks and landmarks,
and lesser-known episodes in the village's history.

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