The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has selected Caldera as a recipient of the 2026 Knight Cities Challenge. The grant funds Public Records Without the Backlog, a year-long project with the City of West Palm Beach, Florida, and the City of Duluth, Minnesota. We’ll bring Mesa, our AI platform for government, to the staff who handle public records in both cities.
Records requests are growing in number and complexity faster than cities can add staff to answer them. Most records software tracks requests as they move through the queue. Mesa for Public Records helps staff with the work itself: finding responsive records, reviewing them against each state’s public records law and its exemptions, and preparing them for release.
Mesa already reviews records at scale: the San Francisco Assessor-Recorder used Mesa to review 7.4 million pages of property records, saving more than 128,000 hours of staff time. What we learn in West Palm Beach and Duluth will shape how Mesa serves other cities.
The Knight Cities Challenge is a $5 million open call for ideas that strengthen the 26 communities where the foundation invests. Knight has published this year’s recipients on its Knight Cities Challenge page.
Thank you to the Knight Foundation, and to our partners in West Palm Beach and Duluth. We’re looking forward to getting to work.