Municipal clerk records retention software that knows which box is legally destroyable this quarter
Municipal clerk records retention is the practice of keeping each series of records a city creates for the minimum period its state schedule requires, then destroying it on an approved and documented schedule. There were 90,837 local governments in the United States in 2022, rising to 91,438 by 2025, and each answers to a schedule it did not write. Neurobird holds the series, the trigger event, the hold and the destruction approval in one register.
Neurobird Municipal Clerk Records Retention in short
- Encode your state retention schedule as data rather than as a PDF on a shared drive
- Attach the trigger event to the record so the clock can actually start
- Check legal holds and open records requests before anything becomes eligible
- 90,837 Local governments counted in the 2022 Census of Governments, rising to 91,438 by 2025. Nearly every one has a clerk who personally owns records retention. US Census Bureau, government organization summary
- 22 months Federal law requires records relating to any federal election to be retained for 22 months after the election, a period that runs whatever a state schedule says. Cornell Law School, 52 U.S. Code 20701
- Pricing runs 110 to 460 US dollars per month across 3 tiers. Early access is free.
What municipal clerks and records officers actually deal with
Why it stays broken
Retention is a legal schedule applied to physical and digital reality, and nothing joins the 2. The state publishes hundreds of series with different triggers, the city stores them across 12 rooms and 4 shared drives, and the crosswalk between them is a spreadsheet only the clerk can read.
A city carrying 318 record series across 24 departments is running 318 separate clocks, and most of them start on an event rather than a date.
State agencies’ retention schedules indicate that historical records must be transferred to the State Archives following the Procedures for Transferring Records to the New York State Archives.
Neurobird Municipal Clerk Records Retention Compliance Platform
Encode the schedule once, attach the trigger event to the record, and let eligibility for destruction be a query instead of an archaeology project.
- 1Encode your state retention schedule as data rather than as a PDF on a shared drive
- 2Attach the trigger event to the record so the clock can actually start
- 3Check legal holds and open records requests before anything becomes eligible
- 4Document destruction approvals so a disposal is defensible years later
What changes with Neurobird Municipal Clerk Records Retention?
The same work, read left to right: how it runs today, and how it runs once the record is in one place.
| Today | With Neurobird Municipal Clerk Records Retention |
|---|---|
| The state publishes hundreds of record series with different triggers, and the crosswalk to your actual boxes lives in one person's spreadsheet | Encode your state retention schedule as data rather than as a PDF on a shared drive |
| Most retentions start on an event, not a date, so nothing can be calculated without knowing when the contract closed or the building came down | Attach the trigger event to the record so the clock can actually start |
| Nobody destroys anything, because destroying the wrong thing is a legal problem and keeping everything is only a storage problem | Check legal holds and open records requests before anything becomes eligible |
Who is this for?
Same schedule, three different exposures.
You are the whole records function
You are also elections, licensing and council support. You need the retention answer in seconds rather than an afternoon in a PDF.
You coordinate 24 departments
Police, building and finance each keep their own records their own way. You need one crosswalk everyone works from.
You cover several entities
Different schedules, shared storage, one records officer. You need eligibility and holds tracked per entity without three separate systems.
How does Neurobird Municipal Clerk Records Retention work?
Load your state schedule
Series, minimum retention and trigger event come in as data, so a schedule revision is an update rather than a rewrite of everything.
Attach the trigger, not just the date
Contract closed, employee separated, structure demolished. The record carries the event that starts its clock, so eligibility can be calculated at all.
Approve destruction on the record
Eligible series surface with their hold status and the approval that authorises disposal, and the approval stays attached for as long as anybody might ask.
The retention register, as your clerk would read it
A working preview. Tick a series to check it for destruction eligibility.
| Requirement | Status | Next due | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Election materials, 22 months | current | in 42d | |
| Building permit file, 10 years after | due soon | in 9d | |
| Council minutes, permanent | current | in 120d | |
| Payroll register, 4 years | overdue | 3d late | |
| Bid file, closed contract plus 4 | current | in 64d |
Tick a requirement to file evidence against it.
Where a city's retention obligations actually come from
Useful if you are building a schedule crosswalk or defending a disposal. Each source links out.
Local governments counted in the 2022 Census of Governments, rising to 91,438 by 2025. Nearly every one has a clerk who personally owns records retention.
US Census Bureau, government organization summaryFederal law requires records relating to any federal election to be retained for 22 months after the election, a period that runs whatever a state schedule says.
Cornell Law School, 52 U.S. Code 20701New York consolidated its separate local government schedules into a single Retention and Disposition Schedule in 2020, so clerks who had learned the old schedule numbers had to relearn the entire crosswalk.
New York State Archives, retention schedulesFederal records may not be destroyed without an approved disposition authority, the principle every state archives adapted when it built local government schedules.
eCFR, 36 CFR Part 1226Georgia's local government schedules set minimum retention periods approved by the State Records Committee under statute, which is why an unapproved destruction is a legal matter rather than a filing error.
Georgia Archives, local government retention schedulesMunicipal clerk records retention software questions, answered
Key terms
- What is a records retention schedule?
- A records retention schedule is the legal instrument that lists each series of records an organisation creates, the minimum period each must be kept, and when it may be destroyed. For a city it is issued or approved by the state archives or a state records committee, and it sets a floor: you may keep records longer, never less.
- What is a trigger event in records retention?
- The event that starts the retention clock. Very few series are simply kept for a fixed number of years from creation. Most read as contract closed plus 4 years, employee separated plus 6, structure demolished plus the life of the building. Without the event recorded, the eligibility date cannot be calculated at all.
Who decides how long a city must keep a record?
The state, in almost every case, through a records commission or state archives that issues local government schedules. Federal law adds its own periods on top, such as the 22 month retention of records relating to a federal election. Local policy can extend a period but cannot shorten one.
What happens if we destroy a record too early?
At best an audit finding, at worst spoliation in litigation and a statutory violation, depending on the state. That risk is why most cities quietly keep everything, which creates a different problem: 30 years of boxes and an open records request that has to search all of them.
Does this store the records themselves?
No. Documents stay in your document system, your shares or your physical storage. This holds the schedule, the series, the trigger events, the holds and the approvals, and tells you what is eligible and where it is.
Why we are building this
Records retention is one of the few municipal jobs where doing nothing looks safe and is expensive. Keep everything, pay for storage forever, and turn every open records request into a search of 30 years of boxes.
Doing it properly needs the state schedule, the trigger events and the holds to be in one place. Almost nowhere are they, so the crosswalk sits in a spreadsheet that retires when the clerk does.
We would rather build this with clerks who have actually processed a destruction request. Tell us how yours works, and where we have got it wrong.
Where the requirement comes from
State schedules and the federal principle they are built on.
- National Archives, records control schedules How disposition authority works at federal level, the model most state and local schedules follow.
- Texas State Library and Archives Commission, local retention schedules A full set of local government retention schedules by function, useful as a comparison to your own state's.
- New York State Archives, retention schedules The consolidated local government schedule and guidance on applying it to real records.
- International Institute of Municipal Clerks The professional body for municipal clerks, including education and records practice resources.
How much does Neurobird Municipal Clerk Records Retention cost?
Priced per organisation and scaled by departments, because the schedule is a city wide instrument. Unlimited series, users and holds on every tier.
- State schedule as data
- Series register
- Trigger event tracking
- Destruction eligibility list
- Email support
- Everything in Small city
- Legal hold register
- Destruction approval workflow
- Department crosswalk
- Named contact
- Everything in City or county
- Multi entity schedules
- Open records request links
- Disposal audit history
- Onboarding included
Get free early access
If you own records retention for a city, tell us how your schedule crosswalk works today and who else can read it.
Straight answer on where this is: In development. Early access gets the working preview, influence on what ships first, and early access pricing. It does not get you a login today.
Prefer email? Write to office@neurobird.com and a person will reply. No autoresponder.