NRS-15812 | General council meeting attendance books [Municipality of Balmain]

Full description

This series contains the General Council Meeting Attendance Books of the Municipality of Balmain. These books are arranged chronologically by date of meeting. The General Council Meetings (see NRS 15810) were held at least monthly and also recorded chronologically.

These books appear to have been created to ensure that attendance and absences from meetings under s.37 of the Local Government Act 1919 (Act No. 41, 1919) were correctly recorded. Under this section councillors were required to attend more than one half of meetings held by the council in any year in order to retain office. Leave of absence was granted due to illness or other sufficient causes.

For each meeting a form was completed recording the following information: date of meeting, type of meeting ( ordinary or special), total number of councillors attending, councillors' signatures, names of councillors requiring leave of absence, and the relevant page in the minutes which confirmed the leave. Information contained in the form was verified by the Council Clerk’s signature.

The back of each volume contained provisions for a summary of each Councillor/Aldermen attendances at each meeting for the year. This summary has only been recorded for the first volume until 1924. It is unknown why the summary has not been completed for the remaining volumes. There are also gaps in the series, as 1927 to 1934 is missing, and may not be extant.

Custody History
This series was in the custody of Mitchell library from 1965 until December 2001 when it was transferred to State Records NSW under section 29 of the State Records Act, 1998.