Mr. Louis Ancel, Corporation Council of Maywood, presented an excellent paper on this general topic last year, and since his paper dealing with the legal aspects of this matter was published in the September Municipal Review, I will try not to repeat what he has already said.

The keeping of minutes and records is an important part of our work, perhaps the most important. My remarks are going to be limited to (a) Council Minutes, (b) Ordinances and Resolutions, and (c) Miscellaneous communications presented to the Council. In general they will be a description of what we do in Zion. If they remind you again of the importance of these records—if they suggest ways for improving your record keeping—if they serve as a springboard from which we can take off on a discussion of this matter—then the time spent in assembling them and presenting them to you will have been well spent.

Minutes:—In preparing minutes of the Council meetings I have tried to follow the rule for military correspondence—"brevity consistent with clarity." I have used as a yardstick for the sufficiency of minutes the question, "Will anyone reading this 20 years from now know exactly what the question was and what action was taken on it? How many times have you been exasperated by such records as: "Mr. X's contract, loss of rope, etc. was discussed." Who was Mr. X.? What contract? What was the conclusion? "Mr. Y. was present and his letter was reread." What was the letter about? Where can it be found? Was anything done with it? "A letter from Hon. Judge Z. was presented which was directed to the Clerk, together with the return of the original petition filed by Mr. A." What did the letter say? Where is it? What was its date? What was the petition about?"

At the Council meetings I take notes and the next morning dictate the minutes to my secretary who types them on a ditto master. I do not attempt to record the discussions verbatim. Some cities keep recordings of their meetings and others complete transcripts. Minutes may be kept in greater or lesser detail and each city must decide for itself how much detail it wants. Mr. Ancel's article suggests what and how much is necessary. I read the ditto masters over carefully before they are run off and make corrections or additions it necessary. Copies of this draft are then distributed to the Mayor and Commissioners as soon as possible and copies are also supplied to all department heads with items they are to take care of checked. I think this keeps them better informed about what is going on. The minutes are not considered as official until they have been approved by the Council at its next meeting and after approval they are copied into the permanent minute book.

We find brief marginal notes in red in the minute book are very helpful in locating actions if they are looked up later.

Simply typing the minutes into the book and making marginal notes is, to me, only half doing the job. An index to the minutes is of great importance in day to day operation and is just invaluable at a change of personnel. We index on 3 x 5 cards and cross index generously. To illustrate: A resolution appointing John Jones to the Zoning Board of Appeals would be indexed under the name of John Jones and again under Zoning Board of Appeals as well as under "resolutions" where it would again be indexed under Jones and the Board making a total of four cards for the one action. We try to make the index complete enough so the action can be found under any and all approaches that might be made to it. The index cards, in addition to a brief summary of the action, show the volume and page on which it is recorded and also the ordinance, resolution or document number assigned to these various documents. Reference to these numbers will be made later in this discussion.

I started my comments about minutes with the suggestions of brevity, clarity and completeness. To them I would add:

1. Process your minutes and documents immediately after the meeting while they are fresh in your mind and before any documents are lost or strayed.

2. Get the action down in writing.

3. If you don't have an index start it right now, it will pay dividends. Don't be afraid to cross-index— be too detailed rather than not detailed enough.

4. A manual on indexing and filing available from the Library of Congress is used by some cities as a guide.

Ordinances and Resolutions: We number ordinances and resolutions consecutively. As soon as possible after their passage they are signed, assigned numbers, backed, recorded in their proper books and filed numerically. We do not copy ordinances and resolutions in their entirety into our minutes but refer to them only by title or by a brief description. Ordinances are copied into one book and resolutions into another. Each book is indexed, and in addition to the Council minute index already described, a separate 3x5 card index of subject matter of ordinances and resolutions is maintained. This, in our case, is partial duplication, because our ordinance and resolution index is complete, while the minute index goes back only to 1952. The index cards show the ordinance and resolution number and the volume and page where it is recorded. At the bottom of our ordinances and resolutions we show a record of their adoption and publication if required. If publication is necessary, we attach the publisher's certificate right to the making of the ordinance. We do keep an informal register of ordinance and resolution numbers to avoid duplicating them.

Some ordinances and resolutions may contain such wording as "attached hereto and made a part hereof." I believe they mean exactly what they say and that the document referred to should be attached securely. It the document to be attached is for example, a deed, and all deeds are filed in one place; I suggest that a copy of it be attached to the ordinance or resolution with a note as to where the original is filed.

One more suggestion on this class of documents—if your original ordinances and resolutions are scattered, get them together now. The job gets worse the longer it is neglected.

Miscellaneous Documents. A number of miscellaneous documents are presented to the Council for action such as a request from the American Legion for permission to hold a "Poppy Day" ... a protest from the Chamber of Commerce about the new sales tax . . . and that rare commendation of the City Clerk's action. It is impractical to put their full text into the Council minutes, and yet they amplify and clarify the minutes. I feel they should be filed permanently in some orderly manner just as ordinances and resolutions are filed. We give them consecutive numbers and file them numerically. The document numbers are recorded in the minutes in the following manner: "The request of X church (Document No. 338) for tarring and graveling its parking lot was read." If someone reads that 20 years from now and wants the complete text of the request, Document No. 338 will be there to give it to him. Compare this, please, with an example previously quoted: "A letter from Hon. Judge Z. was presented . . . ".

The minute index cards previously referred to have the document

(Continued on page 35)

* Paper delivered before the 42nd Annual Convention of the Illinois Municipal League, November, 1955.

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THE IMPORTANCE OF MINUTES AND RECORDS
(Continued from page 26)

numbers on them, so that index is a topical index to the document file as well as to the minutes, ordinances and resolutions. In addition I keep a register of the document, numbers to avoid duplicating them.

Conclusion—I know you are going to say "All that is fine if you have time to do it." Actually, careful indexing and filing are time savers. You will find it takes much less time to make up and maintain indexes than it does to search through page's of minutes and drawers of documents for something that happened five or ten years ago.

I have purposely limited my remarks to a few of the records that will be kept permanently. Most of us handle other records such as personnel data, vouchers, checks, etc., and most of us wonder how long to keep them. For suggestions along this line I would again like to refer you to Mr. Ancel's excellent article.