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Show Paperwork filling space; cost of storage skyrockets By SARAH HANSEN A packrat would be right at home at most municipal offices. In fact, his addition would probably go unnoticed. un-noticed. According to the Division of Archives Ar-chives and Records Service, Utah's cities and towns spend thousands of dollars and devote significant office space and equipment to the creation, crea-tion, organization, use, maintenance and storage of their records. Current studies show that every inch of paper in filing cabinets costs an average of $200 to create, and $7 per year to store. Estimates are that one-third of all records maintained by an office are obsolete. Although Davis County didn't become a county until 1898, the vault at the Davis County recorder's office contains records dating back to 1876. The fireproof vault is filled with rows upon rows of red and white volumes of records that can never be thrown away, according to recorder Carol Dean Page. She said, however, that they are not useless. "They're used everyday by the title people," she said. The State Archives has an ongoing ongo-ing program to help local agencies reduce the cost of information management. As part of that effort, they created the "Utah Municipal General Records Retention SEE RECORDS PG. A-S Records CONT. FROM PG.A-5 Schedule," the first of its kind published pub-lished by the state of Utah. 'We want to do all that is necessary to improve the management manage-ment of records in cities and towns across Utah," said State Archivist Jeffery O. Johnson. "As public officials, we owe our fellow citizens the most efficient services possible for their tax dollars." The schedule was prepared to assist public officials in establishing good records management in municipal offices statewide. The State Archives believe that use of the schedule will help increase productivity pro-ductivity and efficiency, reduce filing fil-ing and storage costs, provide for the destruction of obsolete materials, mate-rials, and preserve valuable records for the future. All public records are, by law, property of the state. The legal requirement re-quirement that every custodian of state records submit record schedules to the State Record Committee is satisfied through inclusion in-clusion in the municipal schedule. Inclusion in the general schedule also expedites the procedure of disposing of obsolete records, since no public records may be destroyed without the prior approval of the State Records Committee. Revisions to the individual schedules will be made periodically to keep the general schedule current. cur-rent. All cities and towns in Utah received a copy of the schedule free of charge. They are available for non-government entities from the Division of State Archives for $10 per copy. |
