VPRS 15423 Engineer's Reports and Town Planning Officer's Reports Function / Content This series commenced as a series of Engineer's Reports. The reports were adhered to the Public Works Committee and, later, to other committees and the Mayor and Councillors. Town Planning Officer's Reports were arranged in the same volumes from October 1986. Reference is made in the Council Minutes to the Engineer's and the Town Planning Officer's reports. This series is the only source in which the report can be found in full. Many Council decisions were based on recommendations in the reports to Council. Recordkeeping System Reports are arranged chronologically. VPRS 15426 Public Works Committee Minutes (GRS 761, GRS 915) Function / Content This series may contain the minutes of the Public Works Committee. The committee system is employed by most Victorian councils. A committee may be appointed by a council for any purpose which it is felt would be better regulated and managed by such committee. A committee may be either a standing committee or an occasional committee. Standing committees (in areas such as finance, public works, health, etc.) are appointed to oversee specific matters on an ongoing basis. Such committees submit reports to the council regularly and these are included in the Council Minutes. Occasional committees are appointed for shorter terms to manage such things are arrangements for ceremonial occasions. Membership of committees is made up of some or all of the councillors of the municipality. The Municipal Institutions Act 1863 (No. 184) introduced provisions that required councils to appoint committees and specified that committee minutes should be kept and signed by the chairman at the following meeting. The Local Government Act 1874 (No. 506) included the requirement that committees report to council. (No prohibition existed against councils operating with committees prior to these acts.) The Local Government Act 1903 (No. 1893) removed the requirement that minutes be kept and added the requirement that committees' reports to council be included in the council minutes. Subsequent legislation including the Local Government Act 1958 (No. 6299) has continued these requirements. The minutes generally record the names of councillors who attended the meeting, details of agenda items and decisions made. Once the minutes have been confirmed as correct at the following committee meeting, they are signed or certified by the mayor or chairman of the meeting. Recordkeeping System Minutes of meetings are arranged in chronological order by date of meeting. Consult the Consignment Details to determine which unit contains the minutes for the period in which you are interested. Indexes were occasionally created for minutes. These are found either in the volumes that they index or in a separate volume. VPRS 15424 Public Works Committee Reports Function / Content This series contains reports of the Public Works Committee which were presented to Council. Reports were submitted to the Council for council meetings. As such, they would (probably) have been circulated to the councillors in advance of the meeting. Reports were (probably) tabled at meetings. Each report covered a number of issues that had come to the attention of the committee through correspondence from ratepayers or from the council itself in relation to council-initiated projects. Reference is made in the Council Minutes to reports. This series is the only source in which the report can be found in full. Many Council decisions were based on recommendations in the reports to Council. Recordkeeping System Reports are arranged in numeric order, each report being assigned the next sequential number. Knowing the approximate date when the subject of research was under Council consideration, researchers may refer to the Accession Consignment List to identify item/s of interest.