On the record—Calabasas vs. transparency





Continuing a discussion that began in November 2011, Calabasas city officials discussed how to keep the city’s recordkeeping system current at their recent February meeting. Their intent is to preserve important documents and enhance accessibility for residents, officials and city employees.

The city’s record retention policies were created in 1996 before digital storage technology was available. Now things have changed.

According to City Manager Tony Coroalles, the city receives about 10 requests for public records each week. Most of the requests involve real estate transactions.

The city must retrieve paperwork and maps from a storage provider named Iron Mountain before it can fulfill the document requests.

In the future, the city will store all documents electronically to save on storage and retrieval fees, and to expedite requests for public records, said Coroalles who plans to have city staff scan all paper documents at city hall to phase out off-site storage and improve accessibility.

“We will be replicating what goes into the paper file,” he said. “Anytime a paper document is placed in a file, it will also be scanned . . . into a PDF.”

During the past 17 years, offi cials have revised the retention schedule three times.

Calabasas surpasses state standards with regard to the retention of public records, offi cials said.

Councilmember James Bozajian agrees the city should require electronic submissions for all incoming documents.

“Everything must be done electronically, and then we’re not going to have any discussion or debate about storage,” he said.

The council appointed Bozajian and Mayor Mary Sue Maurer to review the public record retention schedule with city staff. The issue will then return to the council for further consideration.



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