ARPA funds would allow for easier access to 490,000 land use files

An American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) request for digitizing Town land use files was a main point of discussion at an Aug. 3 Board of Selectmen (BOS) meeting.

The request dealt with the long-standing determination by the Town to digitize all land use records, which amounts to a quote of $65,000 in funds. Explained to the BOS by Kelly Sterner, who works in the financial sector of the town, the effort would be in collaboration with Lower Connecticut River Valley Council of Governments (RiverCOG), while also placing it alongside the Town’s online permitting software, which allows for residents to apply for land permits digitally. After having previously presented plans to its represented municipalities on digitizing land records, the region-wide body released a request-for-proposal (RFP) for an outside party technical enterprise to assist in the project, and chose to work with the Manchester-based Scan-Optics after a vetting process.

For Essex, the company would examine the extent of the Town’s land use records in order to eventually draft a proposal with the appropriate amount it would cost for the digital reconstruction of records. According to Sterner, Scan-Optics will be in charge of oversight of the records, taking custody of them and scanning them in bar-coded boxes for identification purposes should the town request a copy of a document regarding a particular property in town.

According to quantitative measurements by Scan-Optics, there are currently 490,000 documents that would have to be scanned.

Sterner emphasized the importance of being specific with how Scan-Optics will digitally file records uploaded online, having spoken to other municipalities including East Haddam and Glastonbury, the latter of whom currently works with the company on the same effort, about any issues that may arise as a result of not instructing them on how records should be stored. Sterner mentioned that the standard operation of Scan-Optics was to simply scan records and uploading them online without regard to specific instructions the Town would need to explain to them. Stern said that for every property there should be files and sub-files categorized in the departments building or health, as examples mentioned, and creating these categories at the town’s direction should make files properly redistributed to make locating specific files easier.

“We want to maintain the integrity of those sub-files, not have them come back as one big lump of one PDF for the entire property, so that anyone using it would have to go through the whole thing,” said Stern. “This way they can go into the property file and then say, ‘OK, I’m looking for a building document,’ or whatever it may be. It will help with their ability to search and find what they are looking for. These are OCR [optical character recognition], so they are searchable too.”

Ultimately, Sterner saw the digitization effort as a positive one for the town and its residents in seeking out necessary records and permits to be at their digital available

“To get all of that done, after all these years, I think is great. Especially since we’re incorporating it into our permitting software, so people will have their one stop to go to for all of their documents,” said Sterner. “We’ve talked about it for so long, and to have it finally at a point for [Scan-Optics] to come in, I think it is good to get this done.”

RiverCOG has viewed the digitization effort as an opportunity for the allocation of ARPA funds, as opposed to town’s using general funds, seeing that it can be a more efficient and convenient method for residents to access files. Needleman concurred with this view, understanding how collaboration on filing records can be helpful in providing efficiency for residents inquiring about accessing documents, and sees the final step in digitizing records can push Town operations forward for the benefit of community members.

“Ten years ago I wondered how we could get over this, but through physical construction and consolidating files, organizing them, and we had the same help from Building and Fire, and Zoning. It probably would’ve been 850,000 files if we hadn’t had temporary help over the last 10years. This gives an incredible level of efficiency and access.”