TheCambridge Record

The Docket, 1942–2015

Every action the City Council took from 1942 to 2015. 132,415 entries; 72,340 link to the city's scan of the document. Through 2003 this is the City Clerk's annual index volumes, which list actions the city never scanned, so the record here is wider than the scanned collection. From 2004 it is the Final Actions document the clerk publishes after every meeting.

The clerk's sections and numbering are kept as written. Which sections exist changes over the period: see the sections by year. The committee sections give way after 2003 to the item codes the clerk still numbers by today, which is why the later pages read differently. The charter does not change: Plan E was adopted by referendum in 1940, the first council and city manager took office in January 1942, and it was not amended until 2021, then amended by substitution in 2025.

132,415council actions 72,340linked to city scans 74years 27clerk's sections
Gaps. A number missing from a section's sequence shows as a hole. A missing run longer than 50 is the clerk renumbering rather than a lost document, and shows as one ⤳ row. The 1970 and 1977 volumes are incomplete in the city's scans. And from 1969 to 2003, a row marked not scanned is a paper the city's digitization skipped: the index entry survives, the document itself is only on paper at City Hall.

To 2003, transcribed from the City Clerk's index volumes at the city's legislative archive; [?] marks an uncertain reading of the handwriting. From 2004, read from the clerk's Final Actions documents; the city stopped scanning the documents themselves, so those years carry no scan link except Resolutions, which the city kept scanning to 2008. After 2015 the record continues in the recovered record and the portal-era pages.