How clerks can save time and streamline council meeting minutes
As a municipal clerk, you know better than anyone that capturing council meeting minutes is no simple checklist item — most of the effort comes before the meeting even begins. If you’ve ever wondered why a straightforward task can feel so time-consuming, it’s likely because the essential prep work is all too familiar and, more often than not, repetitive. Even though these steps are critical for accuracy and compliance, the process shouldn’t feel like an endless cycle.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
The right practices and software can expedite minute-taking by prepopulating information, making formatting easier, speeding reviews, approvals and publishing. The many features of board management software can do even more to make your job easier.
When it comes to meeting minutes, what frustrates you?
There’s an obvious connection between past meeting minutes, the new agenda, and the current meeting minutes, but it’s often difficult to find a fast and accurate way to transfer information from one document to another. Traditional methods can make it a struggle to produce effective minutes.
It’s time-consuming to record the same attendees for each type of meeting. Each meeting has a different number of members, making quorums different for each. You need to do mental math quickly to determine whether a quorum is present.
It’s also difficult to record votes as they come in and make a fast determination of whether a motion carried or failed. You must also record how each member voted and ensure voting is transparent for the public.
While there’s an agenda to follow, sometimes meetings move too quickly to record important information accurately. You may find yourself jumping around your notepad, scribbling notes in various sections so you don’t forget to add things to the minutes later.
After the meeting, you have to place all the follow-ups on your calendar to make sure the right people handle the right tasks in a timely manner.
The public may put pressure on you to publish the meeting minutes online as fast as possible. You still have to get them typed up and approved, formatted for the municipality’s website, and posted.
Fortunately, there’s a technological solution that solves these problems and more, so you can focus your time on more important matters.
The importance of efficient minute-taking
Fast, accurate minute production benefits every audience involved in local governance.
The council or board. Well-structured minutes can enhance communication among council members, staff and the public. They serve as a reference for follow-up actions and ensure that everyone is on the same page. Consistent and high-quality minutes also reflect well on local governance, demonstrating the council’s commitment to professionalism and good governance. And minutes serve as a historical record of council meetings, becoming part of the community’s archives.
Your community. Accurate and timely minutes are essential for maintaining transparency and accountability, both in greater demand among today’s citizens. They provide a clear record of decisions made and actions taken, vital for public trust and governance. Clear and concise minutes can help the community better understand the decisions and actions of their local government, fostering greater engagement and trust.
You, the clerk. Time is a precious resource, and clerks are often juggling multiple responsibilities each day. Efficient minute-taking can free up more time for other critical tasks, such as preparing for future meetings, managing records and engaging with the community.
How preparing in advance helps save you time later
You can take key steps to save time on this necessary task by following best practices for meeting minutes, both now and into the future.
Start with an accurate agenda. The agenda process is the first step in quality minutes generation. Understand the topics that will be covered, how long each topic will likely take, the expectation for public comments and the action items that will be addressed.
Get approvals early. Following up on agenda item approval l can be a vexing part of the clerk’s process. Automating approvals through your board management software can make it more straightforward and bolster accountability through clear workflows.
Gather documents in one place. If you are struggling to find the right document or version, it may be time to evaluate your file organization system. Use versioning and board management software to keep all meeting-related documents a click away.
Start with a template. A clear, easy-to-understand template that accounts for all the elements of your minutes will speed production. Capture meeting attendants and location to save time for future meetings.
By following these steps, you ensure an effective local government meeting.
Meeting minutes made easy
Clerks can simplify and strengthen their meeting minutes process with this practical checklist, designed to ensure accuracy, efficiency and regulatory compliance at every step.
Download the guideCompliance and legal considerations
Local government meeting agenda and minutes requirements vary depending on the state or other authority the city or town falls under. But no matter where you work, minutes are a high priority undertaking. Stay informed about changes in open meetings laws that may affect what, when or how you share minutes.
Templates, automation and other features available through your board management software can help ensure regulatory adherence. For example, the Municipality of Resolute Bay in Canada must publish a copy of their meeting information in the Inuktitut language, and it was able to add this language capability to its board management software to make this process easier. (Read the case study.)
How Diligent Community helps you with meeting minutes
Thanks to technology, we are long past the days of furious scribbling and rewinding a recording to generate minutes. Diligent Community has several features that make this important job easier and help your local government achieve digital transformation.
Since minutes are based on the agenda items, most of the information transfers automatically from the agenda to the minutes feature when you build the online agenda. After building the agenda, you can pre-populate items, resolutions, motions and action items in the minutes and adjust them during the meeting and after.
With the software’s AI-supported Minutes feature, you can create accurate, high-quality meeting minutes leveraging the closed captions from livestreamed meetings, reducing the time you need to dedicate to review and edit.
Diligent Community gives you flexibility to change things as necessary. Attendance and voting are recorded in real-time. With a few clicks you can input the criteria on your meeting template for the meeting’s quorum, and the software calculates the quorum automatically for future meetings.
When it’s time to vote, the software will automatically record how each member votes and displays each member’s vote, the total votes for and against, and whether the vote was carried or defeated.
All that’s left to do is proofread the minutes, add/adjust motions and double-check the format to make sure it’s readable. You can choose to publish a split-screen of the agenda and the minutes. Just press publish and links to the copies automatically appear on the public area of your transparency website.
Your website also allows allows constituents to subscribe to automated emails containing meeting material of their choosing.
You can also send a group email directly to the council members and staff with the link to the published minutes. The town clerk for the Town of Carbondale in Colorado, describes handling frequent requests for meeting minutes — a process made much simpler with Diligent Community.
Meeting minutes are an important part of your job as a local government clerk, and Diligent Community makes creating them easier. Talk to us today to learn all the ways Diligent improves the meeting management process for you and your council.
