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Why this exists

I built Stark Civic Monitor for two real reasons at once, and I'm not going to pretend it's only one. It's a live piece of my portfolio - I'm finishing my degree at Stark State, doing Cloud Solutions Architect work using AWS architecture for real clients through my own company, and I wanted something real to show for it, not a demo. It's also a genuine gap I found in my own county: once I started digging in, there wasn't a good place for residents, lawyers, or contractors to see this information without hunting through scattered agendas themselves. So I built both at once, on purpose.

What it actually costs

This runs on real AWS infrastructure - Lambda, DynamoDB, Bedrock (the AI that reads and summarizes every document), API Gateway, a custom domain - and that costs real money every month, whether five people use it or five thousand. These are my actual numbers, not estimates:

It's genuinely climbing as more gets tracked and the AI does more work - not a one-time cost.

Free now. Paid tiers exist. Here's the plan.

Everything on this site is free right now - no paywall, no catch. I did build paid tiers into it from the start (you can see Insider, Pro, and Firm levels if you look), and I do plan to charge for some of that deeper access eventually. I'm not hiding that. Right now, while this is getting off the ground, all of it stays free and open.

Where I'm at, and how you can help

I'm working part-time and about to graduate - building this while I get back on my feet. This project is real to me both ways: it's the work I want to be known for, and it's something I genuinely want to give my community. If you're able to chip in toward what it costs to run, it goes straight to keeping it free for everyone else. If you can't, using the site and sharing it helps too.