Incorrectly packed city documents may cost taxpayers $168,000

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

Many of the almost 2,500 boxes of government documents currently at a storage facility in Tampa were packed incorrectly during a move two years ago, making record retrieval difficult if not impossible, according to Key West City Clerk Cheri Smith.

As a result, it will cost an estimated $168,000 to correct the problem, she told city commissioners at their July 21 budget workshop. Smith was explaining her request for $56,000 in the proposed fiscal year 2015 budget. That money would fund the first year of a three-year project to open each of the 2,452 document boxes, inventory the contents and create a master list that will allow instant retrieval of the documents when needed.

The city has stored documents at Certified Records Management, a Tampa facility specializing in municipal document storage, for about 13 years. But the problem began when city employees moved out of the City Hall Annex at 604 Simonton St. into the current facility at Habana Plaza, 3126 Flagler Ave., two years ago, Smith said.

“It was that move. We really didn’t have a problem until that move,” she said.

Despite instructions to put an inventory list on each packed box listing its contents, that didn’t happen. Smith recently went to the storage facility in Tampa and looked at about 20 randomly selected boxes.

“Each box I opened up was in shambles,” she said. “This $56,000 is for someone to go in there and do inventory and get the boxes in better shape.”

Several commissioners, including Commissioner Mark Rossi, were dismayed at the information.

“I’m sorry to ask the question, but why wasn’t it done right when you sent it up there?” he asked Smith.

“I have to say it was the various different departments that obviously didn’t know what to do with their documents and put it in a box and sent it away,” she answered. “I had no control over it. They were supposed to inventory those boxes and the inventory was going to be integrated with the CRM inventory system and it wasn’t done properly.”

Assistant City Attorney Larry Erskine said the city is legally required to retain public records. City Hall staff received training a few years ago on record retention, he said.

“This is a very big thing and it kind of goes hand in hand with public record requests,” he said.

Smith said not all city departments neglected to inventory their document boxes. She didn’t name the negligent offices, but mentioned that commercial building plans, kept by the building services department, were part of the problem.

“For commercial buildings, we need to keep the plan for the life of the structure. A lot of the [building] plans for different addresses were rolled up in one roll. So that’s why retrieval is so hard,” she said.

Smith pointed out that a current ordinance allows the city to charge developers $1 per page for each building plan stored by the city. While that has not been done to date, Smith recommended implementing the fee so that taxpayers don’t have to continue to foot the bill for plan storage.

“I think we should do that as soon as possible,” Rossi said.

The city is also moving towards digital storage of all documents. But that requires that the contents of all stored document boxes be scanned and put into a master computerized list. That program will take about three years to complete, Smith said.

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