Jeff Schaefer

Senior Director, Continuity Brands

Why every municipal clerk needs a meeting minutes template

Sal Newberry has served as the clerk for a seven-member municipal council for 10 years. While she enjoys the variety of responsibilities her role entails, she places particular importance on one task: taking minutes at council meetings. She knows that clear, accurate meeting minutes are essential not only for the council’s internal recordkeeping but also for maintaining transparency with the public. Over time, however, the pace and complexity of meetings have increased. In addition to minute-taking, Newberry must enforce Robert’s Rules of Order and manage technical aspects like livestreaming, which can divert her attention from capturing key details.

To keep up with these demands, Newberry sees the value in using a meeting minutes template. A well-structured template allows her to input essential information before the meeting begins, helping her stay organized and focused during fast-paced discussions. It also enables her to deliver finalized minutes to board members, leadership and the community more quickly and efficiently. For clerks like Newberry, a meeting minutes template isn’t just a convenience — it’s a vital tool for accuracy, speed and professionalism.

Why a meeting minutes template for municipal clerks is helpful

Meeting minutes are a legal and official record of meetings. Minutes can be called into court proceedings as legal evidence, so it’s important that they are true and accurate.

Taking meeting minutes manually is time-consuming. Meeting discussions can go fast, so it’s possible for you to miss important points while writing down notes.

With a template, you can prefill routine details — such as the meeting date, location, and attendees — before the meeting begins, allowing them to focus on capturing key decisions and discussions in real time. This not only improves the accuracy of the minutes but also speeds up the entire documentation process, making it easier to share records with board members and the public promptly.

Governance solutions like Diligent Community offer a templated live minutes feature where much of the information is automatically filled in from the agenda before the meeting starts. This helps to streamline the rest of the process so clerks can focus on the proceedings and capture decisions as they happen.

Information to include in council meeting minutes

Whether you take minutes yourselves or use a template, they should include the following items at a minimum: 

• Date and time of the meeting.
• Location of the meeting.
• Type of meeting.
• Names of any members present, including elected officials and staff.
• Names of board members who arrive late or leave early.
• A description of each action item, motion, proposal or resolution.
• The identity of anyone making and seconding a motion, along with the name of each person voting for or against each proposal.
• Points of order or appeals
• Notes about complying with specific legal procedures
• Any recesses or executive sessions,
• Public comments.

Using a standardized template aligned with your agenda and local policies ensures consistency across all meeting records, whether for full council sessions or committee gatherings. It simplifies the process for you by providing a repeatable structure that can be adapted as needed, reducing the time spent formatting and organizing notes.

With a reliable template in place, you can focus more on capturing the substance of discussions and decisions, confident that the framework supports legal compliance and public transparency. Over time, this consistency also helps build trust with stakeholders who rely on clear, accessible records of government proceedings.

A template for minutes for a local government or council meeting

If you’ve never used a template for minutes before, your current minutes can help you structure a template. Your state or local government may also have policies on how minutes are to be recorded and what should be included.

Since minutes follow the order of the agenda, the agenda will also give you an indication of how to format and order council meeting minutes. Templates also should allow for some flexibility to change between full board meetings and committee or council meetings.

The Georgia Municipal Association recommends the following order for meeting minutes:

1. Call to order
2. Invocation
3. Pledge of Allegiance
4. Awards and presentations
5. Approval of minutes
6. Public hearings
7. Ordinances and resolutions
8. Bids, contracts, expenditures and agreements
9. Local funding and requests
10. Boards and commissions
11. Reports
12. Public comments
13. Adjourn

Rather than starting from scratch each time, a meeting minutes template allows you to work smarter by organizing recurring elements in a consistent format. This not only reduces the risk of missing key details but also ensures that all required information is captured efficiently and accurately.

Here's an example of a council meeting minutes template available on Diligent Community:

Templates can be tailored to reflect the structure of council meetings, making it easier to follow the agenda and record actions in real time. By eliminating repetitive formatting tasks, you can focus on the substance of the meeting and produce minutes that are both thorough and timely.

Using technology for taking your minutes

Once you experience the time-saving benefits of using a meeting minutes template, the next logical step is to enhance that efficiency with technology. Digital tools not only support the use of templates but also automate and streamline the entire agenda, board pack creation and minute-taking process — helping you stay focused, organized and accurate during even the most fast-paced meetings.

Diligent Community is designed to streamline the minute-taking process for clerks. With automated tools, you can focus on recording accurate meeting minutes rather than getting bogged down with formatting and data entry.

The software has other features that save time, enhance and make minute-taking more effective:

Prepopulated information: The software allows you to prefill essential details in a template, such as date, time, location, attendees, standing headings and items reducing the amount of manual data entry required

Real-time note taking: During meetings, you can add notes directly to the corresponding sections of the minutes template, which enhances accuracy and efficiency. 

Single-click publishing: After reviewing for accuracy, you can publish the meeting minutes to elected officials, stakeholders and the public with just one click, mirroring the publishing process for agendas. 

Add to the agenda: Quickly and easily add minutes to your next meeting agenda for official adoption.

Secure online storage: All meeting agendas and minutes are stored securely online, allowing for easy access and searches. This feature helps ensure that important records are never lost and can be retrieved quickly. 

Accessibility for the public: The transparency website allows the public to access council meeting agendas and minutes easily, promoting transparency. 

Diligent Community also offers artificial intelligence (AI) support for minute-taking. AI Meeting Minutes feature allows you to generate relevant, high-quality meeting minutes based on your public meeting livestream transcripts.

With this feature, you can:

• Articulate key takeaways and track decisions and actions.
• Enhance accuracy and efficiency in creating meeting minutes, even during fast-paced discussions.
• Ensure that all actions and motions are accurately captured and documented.
• Suggest updates to text based on past meeting records, easily added to minutes with a single click.

Diligent Community not only supports you and other municipal clerks in maintaining accurate records but also enhances overall meeting productivity, making the entire process faster and more organized. Request a demo today to see how we can help support the work of your local government.