Privacy Policy

What Petaluma Civic collects, why, and how to see or remove it. This describes what the site actually does, in plain language, not a generic template.

Last updated August 22, 2026.

What we collect

Depending on how you use the site:

• Email notifications. If you sign up for alerts, we store your email address, which topics and governing bodies you follow, and your preferred language.
• An account. Signing in (by passkey or email link) creates an account tied to that email so you can manage your notifications and come back later. If you register a passkey, we store its public key and a usage timestamp — never a fingerprint, face scan, or anything biometric. That check happens on your own device and never leaves it.
• Feedback. If you rate an AI answer or report a problem, we store what you submitted (a thumbs rating and/or a comment), which page it was about, and your email only if you chose to give one.
• Anonymous usage data. Which pages get visited and roughly how, to understand what's useful. This is a randomly generated id stored in your browser for the session, not your name, account, or IP address — we don't record IP addresses for this at all, and it's skipped entirely for visits from the same team building the site.

We don't collect payment information (there's nothing to pay for), and we don't ask for anything beyond what's listed above.

Who else sees it

• Resend delivers the emails we send (sign-in links, confirmations, notifications) — they process the message on our behalf and don't use it for anything else.
• Sentry helps us catch errors in the site itself. It's configured not to collect personal information by default.

We don't sell data, share it with advertisers, or use any ad-tracking scripts. Nobody outside of running the site sees what you submit.

How long we keep it

Your account and subscriptions stay until you remove them. Feedback and anonymous usage data are kept to help us understand and improve the site over time.

Your choices

• Every notification email has a one-click unsubscribe link.
• Sign in any time at My Account to change what you're subscribed to, add or remove a passkey, or delete your account outright — which removes your email, subscriptions, and passkeys everywhere, immediately and permanently.

Questions

Reach the city clerk's office at cityclerk@cityofpetaluma.org with any privacy question or request.