Privacy Policy

Last updated: 24 September 2026

This policy explains, in plain English, what this website collects, why, and what you can do about it. It describes this site only. It is not the City of Culver City’s policy, and it does not cover the other websites we link to.

Who we are

This site is run by the Carvajal for Culver City Council campaign. Its address is https://www.carvajalforculvercity.com. It publishes news, blog posts, videos, and Culver City Council legislation and meeting records, and it invites residents to comment, vote in polls, endorse the campaign, and get in touch.

What you choose to give us

We only ever hold this because you typed it into a form and sent it.

Comments. Your name, email address, an optional website, and what you wrote. Your name and comment are public; your email address is not. If you ask us to remember you, those details are kept in a cookie on your own device so you do not have to type them again.
Forum accounts. Your display name, email address, and a password we store only as a one-way hash. Your posts and replies are public.
Poll votes.The option you chose. Votes are anonymous. We record your IP address with the vote purely to stop the same person voting repeatedly, and it is never shown to anyone or used to identify you. You are asked separately, afterwards, whether you would like your name attached — and nothing is attached unless you say yes.
Endorsements. Your name, email address, the category you pick, and your message. Your endorsement is only published if you tick the box asking us to publish it.
The contact form. Your name, email address, phone number, and message. This goes to the campaign and is not published.
Newsletter signups.Your email address and which kinds of update you asked for. We also keep the date, the IP address, and the browser you signed up from, as a record of consent — it is the only thing that settles a later dispute about whether someone signed up at all.
The AI chat assistant. The questions you type. See Other companies that help run this site below for where they go.

What we collect automatically

Google Analytics. We use Google Analytics 4 to understand how many people visit, which pages they read, roughly where in the world they are, and whether they arrived from a search engine, social media, or a link. Google sets cookies on your device to do this. We have deliberately turned off Google Signals, advertising features, and ad personalisation: this site runs no advertising, and nothing collected here is used to target you anywhere else.

Our own measurement.We also count things ourselves, on our own servers, without sending them to anyone. This records which page was viewed, how long it was actually being read, how far down it was scrolled, and which buttons were used — tied to a random identifier stored in a cookie on your device, so we can tell a returning reader from a new one. It contains no name, no email address, and no IP address, it is never matched to your comments or your account, and it never leaves this site.

Explain links. Where a legislation or meeting record offers an Explain link, we record only which record was clicked and when, so we can see which decisions residents most want explained. No identifier of any kind is stored with it.

Search Console. Google reports to us, in aggregate, which search terms brought people to this site. We never see who searched.

Rate limiting. The AI chat assistant records your IP address against a daily count, so that one visitor cannot exhaust the allowance for everybody. It is not linked to your questions.

Cookies, and how to say no

The cookies this site can set are:

Necessary. Keeping you logged in, keeping forms secure, and remembering your choice about analytics. These cannot be turned off without breaking the site.
Convenience. Your name and email for the comment form, if you asked us to remember them.
Analytics. Google Analytics cookies, and the random visitor identifier described above.

Analytics is on when you arrive, and a notice at the bottom of the page says so.

How to turn analytics off. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal, we treat that as a request to opt out and Google Analytics does not run at all. Firefox, Brave and DuckDuckGo send Global Privacy Control by default; Chrome, Edge and Safari can send Do Not Track from their privacy settings. Any ad blocker will also stop it, and we do not work around any of these.

You can also block or delete cookies for this site in your browser’s own settings, or install Google’s official opt-out add-on at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. None of this changes what the site does for you.

Other companies that help run this site

These companies process data on our behalf. We do not sell your information, and we do not share it for anyone else’s advertising.

Google— Analytics, Search Console, and reCAPTCHA, which checks that forms are being filled in by a person rather than a bot.
OpenAI— powers the AI chat assistant. The questions you type there are sent to OpenAI to produce an answer. Do not type anything into it you would not want to leave this site.
Our email provider— delivers newsletters, reply notifications, and account emails.
Our web host— keeps standard server logs, including IP addresses, for security and troubleshooting.

Links and content from elsewhere

Some pages embed videos or images from YouTube, and the Explainbuttons open ChatGPT in a new tab with a question already written for you. Donations are handled entirely by eFundraising Connections on their own site. Legislation and meeting records come from the City’s public Legistar system. Once you are on one of those sites you are covered by their privacy policy, not this one.

How long we keep things

Comments, forum posts, and published endorsements stay while they are published, and go when you ask us to remove them.
Contact form messages and unpublished endorsements are kept while they are still relevant to the campaign.
Newsletter records are kept until you unsubscribe, plus a record of the unsubscribe so we do not email you again by mistake.
Google Analytics data is kept for 14 months, the shortest period Google offers beyond two months.
Our own detailed measurement is kept for 90 days and then reduced to daily totals that identify nobody. The random visitor identifier expires after 13 months.
Your analytics choice is remembered for six months.

Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask us what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Every newsletter has a one-click unsubscribe, and you can manage which updates you receive from the link at the bottom of any of them.

If you are in California, the CCPA and CPRA give you the right to know what personal information we collect and why, to have it deleted, to have it corrected, to opt out of its sale or sharing, and not to be treated differently for exercising any of those rights. We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, so there is nothing to opt out of — but the Decline button turns off analytics regardless.

To make any request, use the contact form and say what you would like us to do. We may need to confirm you are the person the information belongs to before we act on it.

Children

This site is meant for adults taking part in local civic life. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe a child has sent us something, contact us and we will delete it.

Security

The site is served over HTTPS, passwords are stored only as one-way hashes, and the administration area is behind a login. No website can promise perfect security, and we do not.

Changes to this policy

If we change what we collect or why, we will update this page and change the date at the top. For a change that materially affects your privacy, we will show the notice again so you can make the choice afresh.

Contact us

Questions about this policy, or about anything we hold: please use the contact form.