Governance memory for public bodies
The public record your board adopts — and the institutional memory behind every resolution.
MinuteSmith turns each city council, planning, or school board meeting into clean, adopted minutes and a searchable, cited archive of every motion, ordinance, and public-comment issue your body has ever handled — across terms, clerks, and administrations.
$0 charged today · card required · cancel anytime · members you invite are always free.
Built for the bodies that meet in public
- City & town councils
- Planning & zoning boards
- School boards & districts
- County commissions & special districts
- Library, parks & utility boards
What your public body keeps with MinuteSmith
- Adopted minutes & the public record. Motions, roll-call votes, and decisions are extracted into clean draft minutes your board reviews and adopts, producing the transparent record residents expect to read.
- Resolutions & ordinances, archived for good. Every resolution adopted and ordinance enacted is captured with its date, vote, and context, so years later you can find exactly what passed and on what terms.
- Public-comment issues that don't disappear. Recurring concerns raised in public comment are tracked across meetings, so a drainage or zoning complaint heard last spring isn't forgotten by the next session.
- Agendas & meeting packets in one place. Staff reports, attachments, and packet materials live alongside the minutes they informed, so the full basis for each decision stays together and retrievable.
- Years of past minutes, imported. Bring in scanned and digital minutes from prior councils and clerks so decades of municipal decisions become searchable in one cited archive.
- Continuity across terms & administrations. When seats turn over after an election or a clerk retires, the body's full decision history stays intact instead of walking out the door.
Ask your archive
Questions you could ask once your archive exists (illustrative — try it on your own meeting):
- “What resolutions has the council adopted on short-term rentals since 2021?”
- “Which public-comment issues have come up at three or more meetings without a final decision?”
- “Show every variance the planning board has granted on Main Street, with the vote.”
- “What conditions did we attach when we approved the Riverside subdivision packet?”
Why not just use ChatGPT?
A general chatbot can summarize one agenda packet you paste in, but it has no memory of what your council actually adopted three years ago or what residents keep raising at public comment. It can't cite the meeting, the date, or the roll-call vote — which is exactly the standard a public record is held to. MinuteSmith answers only from your body's own adopted minutes, with the citation attached.
Security & data handling
Your minutes are public by design, but staff and member contact details and your account stay isolated in a per-organization database, encrypted, and are never used to train AI models. See the Trust Center and Security page; for a procurement or security review, contact our security team.
Frequently asked questions
Does MinuteSmith keep us compliant with open-meeting laws?
MinuteSmith helps you produce the timely, accurate, accessible public record those expectations are built around — clean adopted minutes, captured votes, and a searchable archive — but compliance with your jurisdiction's specific statutes remains the responsibility of your clerk and counsel.
Can we import minutes from previous councils and clerks?
Yes. You can bring in years of prior minutes, including older scanned documents, so past resolutions and ordinances become part of one searchable, cited archive rather than sitting in filing cabinets.
Is this a meeting-management or e-voting portal?
No — and that's deliberate. MinuteSmith is the record and the memory of what your body decided, not a live-vote or packet-distribution tool, so it complements your agenda workflow instead of trying to replace your clerk's process.
How are board members and the public charged?
Pricing is per organization, not per seat, so every council member, commissioner, and staff user is included free. New members added after an election cost nothing extra.
Give your organization a memory that outlasts its members.
Plans start at $149/mo ($1,500/yr), with a 14-day trial — credit card required, cancel anytime. Members you invite are always free.
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