Weston Working to Store Town Records

The question of what to do with town records—many of which the town is compelled to hold onto by state law—has been up in the air for quite some time.

Susan Brennan, the director of the Weston Public Library, may have the answer, or at least part of it. She was at the Board of Selectmen meeting Tuesday night to discuss preliminary plans for archiving, storing and collecting valuable town records.

Currently, many records are stored in the basement of Town Hall, but not in any organized fashion. Other records are spread out around town, in different town offices or at the library.

“There’s a lot of work to be done before we can get to the point of investigating how much we have to do,” said Brennan.

Town Manager Donna S. VanderClock said some records can be disposed of, but that the town needs to seek permission from the state first. There are also state rules and regulations about what can be kept and what can be destroyed, she said.

Records would eventually all be stored in the basement, with proper climate controls and a fire-fighting system in place, said Brennan. Instead of a sprinkler system, for example, there would be a system to throw powder on the fire instead of water, which would damage any papers.

In addition, this would allow for better organization among town employees for their own records.

“The goal would be to make it easy for town employees to keep up with their records management,” said Brennan. Anything then stored in the basement would have a label on it indicating whether it has to be permanent or can eventually be thrown away, she said.

Selectman Michael Harrity wondered about electronic copies of some documents, and Brennan said there is software available to sort records by the records retention schedule laid out by the state, which could also have the records available online.

“But that’s a whole other segment to this,” she said.

Additionally, said Brennan, electronic records can degrade over time, with formats being completely unavailable after a few years. Some records, like birth certificates, the town will likely always have to hold onto the paper copies, she said.

Members of the Weston Historical Society, including President Pam Fox, said they hoped this could become part of a greater project to have a better system in place of storing both town and historical records, some of which likely overlap.

But this project for now solely focuses on town records, said Brennan.

“I don’t think [historical records are] in the same place in the basement,” she said.

Brennan said that nothing would get thrown out without going by the relevant town board or committee, including the Historical Society.

VanderClock said she will start to draft requests to use Community Preservation Act funds to help offset some of the costs of the project.