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What is the Municipal Clerk?

"Roles of the Clerk and Clerk-Treasurer in Montana Municipal Government: Recordkeeping, Finance, and Council Support"

Clerk of the council

 In virtually all of Montana’s 127 municipal governments, the clerk is critical to communication and coordination between the two branches of government. The city or town clerk usually serves as the recording clerk of the council responsible for posting the legally required notice of the council meetings and the preparation of the legally required minutes of all council meetings. As well, the clerk is responsible for the authentication of all ordinances and resolutions adopted by the council and entering these into a systematic file of resolutions or into the required “Ordinance Book,” which must be re‐codified every five years 7‐4-4501, 7‐4‐4511, 7‐4‐4512, 7‐4-4513, 7‐5-107 and 7‐5-4201, MCA.

Officer of the executive branch

Even though providing essential administrative support to the council, the clerk is also 
an executive branch officer and department head who usually serves as administrative assistant to the mayor; for example, assisting with the budget and preparing the agenda for council meetings.

Clerk-Treasurer

In almost all units of the council-mayor form of municipal government in Montana the city or town clerk also serves as the “treasurer” and is referred to as the “clerk‐ treasurer.” Most often in this role the clerk-treasurer is essentially the “chief financial officer” of the municipality. As such, the clerk‐treasurer is responsible to the mayor for the municipal accounting system, the billing and collecting of all utility fees (such as the water and waste water service fees), the processing of all claims for payment for approval by the council and mayor, and the assembly of the annual operating budgets for as many as 20 separate governmental funds. At the conclusion of the fiscal year, the clerk/treasurer is responsible for the preparation of the required Annual Financial Report (AFR) for submission to the state Department of Administration. (See 7‐4‐4101, 4102 and 4103, MCA and especially 7-4‐4106, MCA for authority to consolidate the offices of clerk and treasurer.