TRNSF-2024-2 : Intra Departmental Transfer in the amount of two thousand two hundred thirty dollars and fifty-five cents ($2,230.55) from Recodification Account Number 011612-529301 to Equipment Account Number 011612-530400 to purchase moveable shelving units for permanent storage of legislative body files in the basement archival vault.

Transcript (~5 min @ 16:15)

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▶ 16:10 Robb Stewart: We have two items on the agenda this evening. Uh, both, uh, transfers. Uh, the first item being transfer 2024 dash two. This is an interdepartmental transfer in the amount of $2,230 and 55 cents from the reification account. Number 0 1 1 6 1 2 dash 5 2 9 3 0 1 to equipment account number 0 1 1 6 1 2 dash 5 3 0 4 0 0 to purchase movable shelling units for permanent storage of legislative body files in the basement, archival vault.

▶ 16:48 Robb Stewart: It's pretty cool. And do we have anybody that's coming forward for this?

▶ 16:53 Speaker 5: Mme. Clark,

▶ 16:58 Speaker 7: evening. My pleasure to be here. If it's with permission of the chair, I'd like to show a little video. I took this on Friday. I always figured the pictures weren't great and it's much better to have video. This is the all CarVal vault in the basement. Whoa. Yeah. So this is the vault, and I wanted to show you what we're talking about. That's the, this is a six foot, six foot, six inch steel door. When you open this up, you can see these are all the archival records. And in the middle of this vault, there are current metal shelving. They're not on wheels, and they obviously don't store all of these banker boxes that we have on the floor. So these are archival records. These are records from eighteen ninety one, eighteen seventy one, and 1871, birth deaths, marriages. There were also the Board of Alderman Motion dating back to 1908. And those metal shelves that we see there, they don't move. Um, I did ask DPW if we could sort of repurpose these. There was a way to put wheels on them. They're from the eighties, they're not repurposable. So I did try, um, I looked at, we looked at WB Mason, I'm sorry, Kim Combines and Amazon Business. They don't have products that were the needs. So we worked with DPW. That is the pricing of them. And if it pleases the council, that is what we are looking at for purchasing. The new shelving would have wheels so they can slide back and forth so we can fit all of the, so they're not on the floor. They're not getting moldy.

▶ 18:20 Speaker 1: They're not getting deteriorating.

▶ 18:22 Robb Stewart: Great. Thank you Madam Clerk. Oh,

▶ 18:24 Speaker 7: And the current reification, um, existing budget line is at $7,830.

▶ 18:31 Robb Stewart: Excellent. Any questions from the, the committee?

▶ 18:38 Devin Romanul: Councilor Ryan? Um, Seems like a good idea to me. Um, thank you for the video. That's really, I would Yeah. Love to look at it in person. Sure. Anytime. But, um, I wanted to ask if, if there's ever been an effort to or consideration of dig, digitize, digitization of those files. It's

▶ 18:53 Speaker 7: Like I paid you to ask that question. Oh, so on Thursday, MMA just did a presentation on digitizing records and archiving processes preservation. Um, I, it's in my queue, in my webinars, I did watch it or try to watch the entire thing. Um, there was some interruptions. So it is in my queue to watch again. I know that Tom Mulligan in the IT department, they have a grant. So we're going to look at best practices in digitizing what we can. There are some that we have to retain permanent storage in paper format. It is my goal to try and digitize as much as we can, because then it also is easy to access. We have digitized all of our marriage records all the way back to 1991, and we have them, the, the, the issue is formatting and making them accessible in optical character recognition as well. Mm-Hmm. So trying to figure out what is the best structure, uh, not just in the clerk's world, but citywide. Um, so it is a huge push of mine to how much storage do we need? What format can it be in? So I'm with you in terms of what can we do? How can we do it? Where do we put the records that we have to keep? Who's gonna preserve them storage wise in terms of where the space is? So I'm looking into it. Yeah.

▶ 20:06 Devin Romanul: Sounds good. Well, let us know how we can help. Yeah. This aside,

▶ 20:14 Speaker 5: Yes, I think any other questions

▶ 20:17 Speaker 9: I'll make a motion to recommend.

▶ 20:21 Robb Stewart: Second, we have a motion to recommend by Council Chet, seconded by President GL under discussion.

▶ 20:31 Robb Stewart: Oh, vice Chair vandiver. Have the same voice, uh, under discussion. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. This will get sent to the full committee with a a, a motion to recommend. Thank You.