Overview

The Open Government module has two parts: The boards, and the calendar. Before you can begin creating meetings with agendas using this module, you must make sure you have all your boards and members in place.

Five pages you should read to get the whole picture:

• Open Govt - Managing Boards and Members
• Calendar - Creating Board Meetings
• Calendar - Creating Meeting Agendas (this page)
• Calendar - Taking Meeting Minutes
• Open Govt - How Email reminders Work

Creating Meeting Agendas

Once you’ve created a new calendar event, and only if you have chosen a Board from the dropdown, you’ll see a green Create Agenda button at the top.

If this is the very first agenda ever being created for this board, the website will create a new blank agenda for you. If this board has had previous meetings on this calendar where agendas were created using this system you will be presented with a list of the previous five meetings, one of which you can click to copy the agendas to this new meeting. You can also click “just create a new blank agenda.”

If you created a new blank agenda by mistake you can click the red “Oops! Delete this Agenda” button. Agendas cannot be deleted once you’ve started adding sections and items.

Once an agenda has been created, two Sections appear automatically. These two sections cannot be removed, or have their sort order changed.

Meeting Preliminaries includes taking attendance (which opens the meeting) and approving minutes of previous meetings that have been created with this module. If you have prior meeting minutes to approve that weren't created through this system you will have to create an agenda item to approve those minutes.

Meeting Wrap-up includes the list of future meetings of this board, and the motion to close the meeting. There is also a button that allows you to publish the draft minutes once they have been fully entered.

ADDING AGENDA SECTIONS

Agendas are broken down into Sections, each of which can contain multiple agenda items. Sections can be named such things as “Old Business” and “New Business” and “Public Hearing” etc.

Click the green Add New Section button to create a new section. A pop-up will appear allowing you to name the section and give it a sort order number (to sort within the entire agenda).

Agenda Sections can be open to the public or Executive Session. If you choose Executive Session while creating an agenda section you will be given a radio button list of legally prescribed reasons why the board will be going into exec.

If a section is set to be exec, the title of that section will be renamed "Executive Session" and the agenda items created within the section will be hidden from the public. Only the admin who created the agenda will be able to see them.

Create as many sections as needed, with the understanding that motions can only be made against agenda items. Same for attaching files. So, create and name your sections so they can contain the items that will be discussed, ie; Old Business, New Business, etc.

ADDING AGENDA ITEMS

Once you have at least one section created you can now begin creating agenda items. Click the green button, and a pop up appears. You'll be prompted to put in the timeslot for the item (which can also just be a, b, c for sorting), a short title for the item, and an optional longer title / description of the agenda item.

Create as many agenda items with each section as you need. You can also begin attaching files to each item if you have any, such as maps, images, whatever.

AGENDA TIMING

You can create an agenda for a meeting as far into the future as you wish, but be aware of the following three important dates preceding the meeting:

1. Seven business days before the meeting, the admin who created the meeting in the calendar, as well as the board, will receive a reminder email that the meeting is in seven business days, and that the agenda will be locked two days before the meeting, as required by law.
2. Four business days before the meeting, the admin who created the meeting in the calendar, as well as the board, will receve a reminder email that the meeting is in four business days, and that the agenda will be locked two days before the meeting, as required by law.
3. Two business days before the meeting the agenda will be locked and labeled as POSTED, meaning you can no longer edit the agenda. The admin who created the agenda, the board, and anyone who signed up for email alerts, will receive a reminder email that the agenda is now final, and that the meeting is in two days.

SIGNING UP FOR EMAILS

If the admin has assigned a contact list to the board (when editing the board itself, select the list from the drop-down), then anyone who has subscribed to that list will receive the two-day reminder, as well as any additional reminders or alerts sent by the board.

POSTED AGENDAS

Once an agenda has entered stage 2, “Posted Agenda”, two working days before the meeting, it can no longer be edited or modified, except for adding file attachments. All other agenda editing buttons no longer appear.

Read about taking minutes >>