Legistar > Success Stories > City of Long Beach
Long Beach Modernizes its Legislative Workflow from Start to Finish & Saves Millions
Long Beach wanted to improve legislative efficiency, accountability, and transparency when they started working with Granicus back in 2002. Between council, boards, and committees, the city has 13 meeting bodies running approximately 6-8 meetings per week to serve the community. Ordinances are constantly being introduced, amended, and passed through this legislative process. Prior to Granicus and Legistar, it required at least 2x in additional clerk staff to manage these meetings and legislation efficiently. Now, it requires less paper and people to run these processes, resulting in nearly $3.1 million in total cost-avoidance savings.
- The Clerk’s Office was spending countless hours on agenda creation before each meeting—manually processing up to 56 reports and then hand-typing recommended items into their meeting agendas.
- Assembling agenda packets was arduous — printing and compiling thousands of sheets of paper into a rubber band bound packet.
- Relying on out-dated technology such as steno pads and cassette tapes to capture accurate minutes during and after the meeting.
- Managing high volumes of incoming calls and requests for meeting recaps, legislative reports, and documents.
Before Granicus, we were stuck in word processors and cassette tapes—it took us nearly 3 weeks to produce our meeting minutes. Now, our minutes are completed in 2 days. 
Larry Herrera,
City Clerk,
City of Long Beach, CA
- Automation of the agenda creation process from start to finish—eliminating redundant and manual workflows completely.
- Live meeting automation enabled Clerk staff to generate what they call “digital minutes.” Minutes are captured in real-time and are automatically indexed to the video recording of each meeting.
- Implementation of a centralized web-portal to serve as a permanent digital repository and a powerful public access point for all legislative records and public meeting videos of council, boards, and committees.
- Creation of a searchable legislative history for any subject or business conducted by City Council.
- Nearly $3.1 million in total cost-avoidance savings from end-to-end legislative automation—roughly $17,000 year printing costs and $300,000 in labor savings per year.
- The Agenda creation process now only requires one person, down for 4.
- Streamlining and increased efficiency in the agenda report workflow from departments to the City Clerk.
- Draft Council meeting minutes are available to City staff within 1 hour after meeting adjournment.
- Final meeting minutes are prepared in real-time and made available within 48 hours or sooner.
- The public has faster and more in-depth public access to legislative history—video, minutes, agendas, and other reports—all from a single keyword searchable one-stop-shop.
- Reduction in calls to the City Clerk’s office because citizens and staff can easily track legislation on their own.
