Board Meeting Management for Regional Councils, MPOs and Transit Agencies

Why meetings are harder for regional agencies

A council of governments might staff a board of directors, an executive committee, an MPO policy board, a technical committee, a citizens advisory committee, a transit committee and an aging council. Each one needs an agenda, a public notice, a place to register, a meeting and minutes.

Most of these agencies have no dedicated clerk, so the work lands on planners and program staff on top of their real jobs. In our conversations with regional agencies, staff put it at 6 to 12 hours for every meeting they prepare, run and document.

The tools rarely help. The agenda lives in one system, the meeting runs in Zoom or Teams, registration happens in a separate form, and minutes get written from a recording weeks later. None of it is connected, so residents have a hard time finding anything and staff rebuild the same context for every meeting.

Put every board meeting in one place

Each board and committee gets its own page with its description, its schedule, and its past and upcoming meetings. All of them roll up into one meetings calendar for the agency.

• Residents search by keyword, date or topic instead of guessing which committee owns an issue.
• Anyone can subscribe to a board, or to a topic like transit, safety or housing, and hear about the next meeting.
• Every meeting has an add to calendar link and a translate option.
• Past agendas and minutes stay on the board page, so the record stays findable after the meeting.

Let residents register to attend

When you publish a meeting, its registration form comes with it. A resident registers from the meeting page in a few seconds, and the registration ties back to that meeting instead of a separate spreadsheet.

• Ask for accommodations at registration, such as an ASL interpreter, an assistive hearing device or wheelchair access, so staff can plan ahead.
• Let people subscribe to the board while they register, so the next agenda reaches them without another sign up.
• See who plans to attend before the meeting starts.

Publish the agenda and take comment on each item

The agenda is the backbone everything else connects to. Build it in PublicInput, upload a Word document, or bring it in from the agenda software you already use. Once it is posted, residents can open the item they care about instead of reading a forty page packet.

On each item, a resident can mark a position (in favor, neutral or opposed) and leave a written comment. The comment goes into the record for that item and is in front of members before the vote. Staff get comments sorted by item instead of one inbox to untangle.

Draft the minutes from the meeting record

Meetings run in person, in a browser or by toll free dial in, with Zoom, Teams or WebEx bridged into the same meeting. PublicInput captures and transcribes it, then drafts minutes from your own template, the agenda and the transcript.

The draft is held for review. Staff edit it and approve it, and nothing reaches the public until a person says so. The point is not to take people out of the record. It is to stop minutes from running two or three months behind.

What changes for a regional agency

See your boards in one place

Tell us a little about your agency and we will set up a walkthrough with your own boards and committees in mind.