The Hamlet Rankings
What towns fight about at the mic
We read the meetings. We count the people whose comments took a side on each question, for and against, and rank the places.
How these rankings work · Cite as: Hamlet City Index Rankings, October 2026
- 82,000+ meetings read
- 1,600+ places with remarks on file
- 2,200+ officials with remarks on the record
Gas stations, place by place
More places had mostly comments for gas stations (101) than against (58)
Ceres, CA ranks #1 most opposed to gas stations among small places. See Ceres’s meetings
Should the city allow new gas stations, including large travel centers? Against means blocking or limiting them. For means allowing them. Each dot is a place where 3 or more people spoke: across, how their comments split, from all against to all for; up, how many spoke.
- More against
- Even
- More for
Also came up in 125 more places where fewer than 3 people spoke
171 places where it came up · 415 people whose comments took a side: 191 against, 224 forMeetings since Oct 19, 2024 (the same 24 months for every topic); newest Oct 7, 2026. Source: Hamlet, from public meeting video. Automated reading of each comment. It can miss or misread some. Fainter dots have not yet met the ranking bar (10 people at 2 or more meetings).
How often it comes up
Came up in 9% of meetings in Q3, down 5% from Q2
- Q1
- Q2
- Q3
- Q4
- Q1
- Q2
- Q3
Share of meetings tracked that took it up, by quarter. Source: Hamlet.
Places ranked on gas stations
Most opposed
Places where more people spoke against, ranked by the method's score (10 voices at the national rate added), so a big crowd outranks a small one. Each person counts once. Numbered places have 10 or more people at 2 or more meetings.
| Rank | Place | AgainstFor | Against | For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ceres CAShare | 16 | 0 | |
| Also on this side, too few people or meetings to rank | ||||
| Ridgefield WA | 4 | 0 | ||
| Wildwood MO | 3 | 0 | ||
| Syracuse UT | 2 | 0 | ||
| Callaway FL | 2 | 0 | ||
| Montgomery TX | 2 | 0 | ||
| Douglas AZ | 4 | 2 | ||
| Plymouth CA | 1 | 0 | ||
| Stuart FL | 1 | 0 | ||
| Whitefish Bay WI | 1 | 0 | ||
44 more places. The full list and the split between officials and the public are part of Hamlet for business, our paid service.
Get the full listMost supportive
Places where more people spoke for, ranked by the method's score (10 voices at the national rate added), so a big crowd outranks a small one. Each person counts once.
| Rank | Place | AgainstFor | Against | For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Too few people or meetings to rank yet | ||||
| Green OH | 0 | 4 | ||
| Moline IL | 0 | 4 | ||
| Marina CA | 1 | 5 | ||
| Avon IN | 0 | 3 | ||
| Fuquay-Varina NC | 0 | 3 | ||
| Holland MI | 1 | 4 | ||
| Canby OR | 0 | 2 | ||
| Kirksville MO | 0 | 2 | ||
| College Place WA | 0 | 2 | ||
| Garner NC | 0 | 2 | ||
44 more places. The full list and the split between officials and the public are part of Hamlet for business.
Get the full listWhat about your town?
Find your townTry: Denver, CO · Reno, NV
How these rankings work
- Where it comes from
- Public meetings of city councils, county boards, planning commissions and school boards, read from each body's own video and transcripts.
- What is counted
- Every remark about the topic, found by the same search terms in every place and marked for, against, mixed or neutral by an automated reader, with a second model checking each one. Mixed and neutral remarks are not counted.
- People, not remarks
- Each person counts once per place and topic, on the side they took most often, however many times they spoke. A person split evenly takes no side.
- How officials count
- Today every speaker counts once: in the meetings counted now, a speaker's role is only an automated guess. Once our roster confirms who an official is, elected and appointed officials will count as 3, since they decide the outcome and speak on the record under their own names. Public commenters and staff count as 1 and are never named.
- The score
- Weighted voices against, divided by weighted voices for and against. Before ranking, every place gets 10 more voices at the national rate for the topic, so a place with four voices cannot top the list by chance; a place with a hundred barely moves.
- Who is ranked
- A place where at least 10 people spoke on the question, each counted once, at at least 2 different meetings in the last 24 months. The weight for officials orders the ranked places; it never lets a place in. Places with fewer show as lighter dots and are not ranked.
- Same-size places
- Places are ranked only against places their size: large (250,000 or more), mid-size (50,000 to 250,000) and small (under 50,000).
- What it is not
- Not a poll of residents. It is the public record of who showed up and what officials said. The places are those whose meetings we hold, not a sample of the country.