NRS-20587 | Committee Minute Books [Rockdale City Council]

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This series is of the Committee Minute Books of the Rockdale City Council and the predecessor agencies. These are the records of the various committees of Rockdale Council. Section 109 of the Municipalities Act of 1867 (Act No.12a, 1867), which was assented to on 23 December 1867, allowed municipal councils to appoint either standing committees or occasional (special) committees, composed of councillors, and to delegate to the committees 'any inquiry negotiation or arrangement or power to do any emergent act or to carry out any work which such Council may have ordered agreed to or directed'. However, Committees had to report to the council at the earliest opportunity.

The use of a separate volume for Committee Meetings in Rockdale municipality began in May 1905, following the Council's approval of a Mayor's Minute of May 18 1905, which suggested that the various committees' reports should be written up in a Special Minute Book which would be presented for confirmation at the following meeting. The original Council Committees were the General Purposes committee, Finance committee, Town Hall, Lighting, Works and Sanitary committees. In later years the main committees were the Finance Committee, the General Purpose Committee, the Parks and Recreation Committee, and the Building, Subdivisions and Developments Committee.

Prior to May 1905, Committee Meeting Minutes are part of the Council Minutes. The Committee Meeting Minutes were bound in separate volumes to the Council Meeting Minutes until June 1994. From July 1994 until March 2004 the Council Minutes and Committee Minutes were bound together in the same volume. In April 2004, Council ceased holding Committee Meetings. In 2010 Committee Meetings were re-instated and their Minutes were again bound together in the same volume as the Council Minutes.

The volumes until 1933 are not indexed. Indexing commences in 1933 and continues through the series, usually found in the volume commencing in January of each year.