How to find any public record
Place, shelf, publisher: the method behind SOS.city, and what to do when the record isn't published.
1. Start with the place
Every record belongs to a place: a city, a county, a state, a country. Open the place in the atlas; its shelves include everything that covers it from above.
2. Pick the shelf
Water, power, safety, housing, laws, funding and the rest. The same shelves run everywhere, so what you learn in one city works in the next.
3. Find the publisher
The agency that keeps the record is the authority. Its page tells you how often it publishes and how to pull it.
4. Check it before you trust it
Look at the update rate, the last update and the licence. Stale data is marked stale.
5. If it isn't published, ask for it
Request it on SOS.city so it joins the gap board, or ask the agency directly: federal agencies answer under FOIA, California agencies under the California Public Records Act, and every state has its own law.