The Model Municipal Records Retention Schedule was prepared by a municipal records management consultant on behalf of 11 Weld County municipalities. It is intended to provide a comprehensive records retention schedule for most records that are typically kept by any small, growing Colorado municipality and is not intended to cover all specialized records retained by larger municipalities. The document may list records that an individual municipality does not currently have but that it may have in the future. The municipality should, however, request approval to follow the entire Model Municipal Records Retention Schedule so that provisions are in place for future growth in records holdings.

The Model Municipal Records Retention Schedule should be reviewed periodically by the adopting municipalities and by the Colorado State Archives to ensure that appropriate updates are made. An Update Request Form is included in Appendix D.

Each municipality that receives approval to follow the Model Municipal Records Retention Schedule should add notations regarding any local provisions affecting the retention periods of its records. To request approval for an individual Colorado municipality to follow the Model Municipal Records Retention Schedule, complete the approval request form included in Appendix C – Approval Request Form.

The Colorado State Archives authorized municipalities to submit requests for individual approval to follow the Model Municipal Records Retention Schedule on _____________, 2007.

Go to the index first!

Terminology that may be unfamiliar to some users is explained in Appendix B – Glossary.

The Model Municipal Records Retention Schedule is organized in 17 individual schedules that group related records. Each schedule is assigned a reference number, and an item identification number is assigned to each records title listed (i.e. 1.10 means Schedule 1, Item 10). The schedule and item identification numbers are listed with the individual records titles in the index -- the key to locating records titles in the schedules.

Because the records titles used may not reflect the exact records titles used by some municipalities, the retention schedule provides a short paragraph that gives descriptive information regarding the use and typical contents of each records series and sub-series.

Retention periods are based on legal requirements for those records governed by such legal requirements and/or on common usage and industry standards for retention of municipal records to meet typical administrative, operational or reference requirements. The retention time period indicates the minimum length of time that the record copy should be retained by the municipality before disposal can take place. A retention period is always specified for the record copy and may also be specified in some cases for duplicate copies for records that are widely distributed throughout an organization. If no retention period is specified for duplicate copies of a particular type of record, the municipality may dispose of these duplicates in accordance with the following guidelines:

Guidelines for identification and handling of some non-records are discussed in Appendix A – Non-Records.