City clerk

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In the United States, a city clerk (known in towns as a town clerk) is an elected or appointed official who is charged with the responsibility of being the official keeper of the municipal records.

A city clerk's office usually publishes agendas for city council or alderman meetings, and is responsible for recording all council- and city mayor-related actions. The staff of the office of a city clerk also usually edits, compiles and publishes the minutes of city council meetings.

The official meetings of the municipalities can become a serious chore as the activity in the town increases from population increases. The task of assembling the Agenda packets with supporting documents can take several hours to days for a single meeting. This job becomes complicated due to various reasons but now is becoming easier due to new agenda software that can easily assemble agendas, minutes and even record meetings and automatically transcribe the meetings. Other sites like TownClerk.com can easily allow the clerk to publish the agendas and minutes of their public meetings to the citizens.

In a village the clerk is the "Village Clerk", county they are known as the "County Clerk", however in the county there is typically so much work and several branches that there is a separate clerk known as the "Clerk of the Legislature" that is assigned to just performing the agenda and minutes for the legislative and committee meetings.

The clerk's office essentially is the hub of all the records for the municipality. Archiving and record retention has been done by storing documents in vaults. In recent years the need for electronic systems to store scanned documents has become greater due to the need for disaster recovery and the increased paperwork and mandates from legal rules and regulations.

Often this job can become big and then Deputy Clerk's can be assigned to share some of the work.