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Dane County staff update Legistar agenda templates, add ordinance notice and plan data cleanup
Summary
County and Granicus staff used a configuration call to add persistent agenda language referencing Dane County Ordinance 7.63, set up reusable standard paragraphs for agenda sections, and plan a multi-step data cleanup of people and office-member records in the county's Legistar system.
Dane County staff and Granicus administrators met on a Legistar configuration call to finalize administrative settings for the county's meeting-management system. The session covered site identity (logo/address), meeting-body and office-member records, agenda workflow templates and standard paragraphs, attachment and file-type settings, approval-tracking practices, and account/security housekeeping.
The most immediate change discussed was adding persistent agenda text to several county board sections that cites local law. Caroline, Granicus trainer, read the language to be inserted as a standard paragraph for multiple headers: “Pursuant to Dane County Ordinance 7.63(1)(a), public testimony will not be taken on Special Matters and Announcements.” Caroline said the same paragraph would be applied to other headers (for example, Denial of Claims and Approval of Minutes) so it populates automatically rather than requiring manual edits for each agenda.
Why it matters: the inserted language is intended to ensure agendas consistently reflect the county ordinance that limits when public testimony is allowed, reducing manual edits by staff and the risk of inconsistent wording across meeting bodies. Caroline noted the paragraph will be stored in Legistar’s standard-paragraph area so administrators can still edit it on an individual agenda if necessary.
County staff also reviewed a larger data-cleanup and governance effort. Participants agreed to run and share reports of current office-member and people records so the clerk’s office can: identify outdated or duplicate entries, retire former employees or test accounts, and normalize member titles (for example, separate a person’s elected office record from a committee chair role). Caroline offered to export body-type reports and office-member listings grouped by body type so the county can prioritize fixes rather than edit scores of individual records one by one.
Key clarifications and settings captured on the call: - Site information: the county name is stored as “Dane County” and the system holds a logo; a main address is optional and may be left blank because many departments use different physical locations. (Granicus) - Bodies and body types: the county’s Legistar instance contains roughly 112 active meeting bodies (including departments and commissions). Primary legislative body settings (the county board) carry special workflow rules in Legistar. - Body headers: the county’s land-acknowledgement text is configured with an end date of 2099 to avoid accidental expiration; staff discussed hard-coding vs. editable text and the trade-off between flexibility and needing Granicus support for future changes. - Office members / people: the database contains about 2,010 people records and roughly 218 active user accounts. The trainers showed how to add start/end dates for office members, record appointments, and track separate terms and chair roles by adding additional office-member entries rather than overwriting prior records. - Departments and referrals: the county maintains about 24 departments in the drop-down that can be used to tag referring departments; staff agreed assigning departments consistently will improve referral tracking and approval workflows. - Agenda workflows and templates: the team reviewed agenda definitions and recommended numbering/spacing practices for sequence numbers so future insertions don’t require a full resequence. They discussed forced headers (always printed) vs. dynamic headers (only printed when items exist) and confirmed most county board headers are forced by ordinance. - Attachment templates and file types: staff can create reminders and required attachment checks (for example, “please attach fiscal note”) using attachment templates; currently the county primarily uses attachments and a simple dot-dot title template. - Approval tracking and drafters: the drafter field appears in the item details report; staff were advised to store drafter emails for users who will be approvers or drafters so notifications and tracking work properly. - Security and accounts: trainers demonstrated how to deactivate test or departed users (which preserves historical actions) and showed optional stronger password policies and single sign-on (SSO) integrations are available if county IT requests them.
Quotes in context: Caroline, Granicus trainer, said, “Pursuant to Dane County Ordinance 7.63(1)(a), public testimony will not be taken on Special Matters and Announcements,” and she explained that standard-paragraph language will be stored so it auto-populates the relevant agenda headers.
Next steps and staffing directions: Granicus will provide PDF reports grouped by body type (office-member listings and people reports) for the county to review. County staff (Kayleen, Patty, and others) agreed to schedule a follow-up to prioritize which meeting bodies need record corrections and to determine whether some boilerplate (for example, the land acknowledgement) should be hard-coded by Granicus or left editable by county staff.
Ending note: trainers pointed staff to the Granicus support portal (support.granicus.com) and prerecorded training videos; Kirsten (the trainer assigned for hands-on training) will run the next training sessions that include practice exercises selected by county staff.
