Agendas and minutes are the most requested documents on most municipal websites, and often the hardest to find. They end up scattered across department pages, named for the file system rather than the reader, and the newest packet sits below a decade of archives. Residents give up and call the clerk. The clerk emails the PDF.
Illustration with invented content.
Posting a packet, start to finish
- 1Pick the boardThe list is your boards, not a taxonomy someone invented.
- 2Set the dateThe meeting page and the calendar entry are created from it.
- 3Attach the agendaAnd the packet, if there is one. Any size.
- 4PublishThe archive, the calendar and site search update together.
What residents get
The clerk who assembled the packet is the person who publishes it. There is no handover, which means there is no queue and no version of the packet living in somebody else's inbox. Files can be any size; the site handles the ones that are too large to email.
Every meeting keeps its own page with the agenda, the minutes and the recording where they exist. Search reads the text inside documents, so a resident looking for a variance on their street finds the meeting it was heard at, not just the folder it lives in.
Minutes arrive weeks after the agenda. They attach to the same meeting rather than starting a second trail, so a resident following an item sees the whole sequence in one place and nobody has to maintain a parallel index.
Replacing a corrected agenda does not break the link a resident bookmarked or the one cited in an email. That single behavior is the difference between an archive and a pile of files.
What staff get
The screen asks for the three things an agenda actually has, and then it is live. Nobody picks a template, a layout or a category, because those are decisions about a website and this is a decision about a meeting.
Minutes arrive weeks after the agenda, which on most sites means a second listing that has to be linked back by hand. Here they attach to the meeting that already exists, so the pair cannot drift apart and no index needs updating.
The recreation committee's secretary should be able to post recreation minutes and nothing else. Permissions follow the boards rather than the site, which is the arrangement that lets more than one person help without anybody worrying about it.
Nobody maintains a list of links. The archive is generated from the meetings themselves, so it is correct by construction and stays correct during the week everyone is busy.
Built for the record, not just the website
- Meeting records carry structured dates and bodies, so search engines can surface the right meeting rather than the landing page
- Documents keep their URLs when the site changes, so links in emails and past notices keep working
- Accessibility applies to the documents too: we will tell you which of your existing PDFs are unreadable to a screen reader, and what to do about them
Included in every TownFront site
This is part of the core product, not an add-on module. Every TownFront website includes it, and it is built to the same standard as the rest of the site: fast on an ordinary phone connection, navigable by keyboard, readable by a screen reader, and maintainable by your own staff.
See how this would work for your community. Request a conversation and we will walk through your current site and what changes.
Other capabilities
- News & Public Notices
- Events & Meeting Calendar
- Documents
- Forms & Permits
- Departments & Contacts
- Search That Works
What changes on the day of a meeting
- Minutes, not hoursFrom opening the editor to the packet being live
- Every boardCouncil, planning, zoning, health, recreation, each with its own archive
- SearchableBy board, by year, and by what the document says