SANATOGA PA – Summer in Sanatoga has become house-cleaning time in the Lower Pottsgrove (PA) Township municipal building, 2199 Buchert Rd. The local government is ridding its files of documents it no longer is legally required to keep.
Filled boxes and a ton of weighty paper will be headed for the shredder, township Secretary Michele Cappelletti said.
The township Board of Commissioners authorized this purge last Thursday (July 23, 2009) during its second monthly meeting in the same building. Board members unanimously approved a resolution declaring their intent to dispose of outdated public records as outlined under the state’s Open Records Law enacted last year.
Most files to be removed have long outlived any usefulness, and probably haven’t been viewed by human eyes in years, township Solicitor R. Kurtz Holloway assured board members. As examples, Cappelletti cited ethics disclosure forms from the late 1990s, which by law must be kept only five years; and contractor bid awards from the early 2000s, which need to be kept only six years.
“This is not just good practice,” board Vice President Jonathan Spadt noted. “It’s highly recommended by the state that we follow” disposal guidelines, he said.
Nothing protected by law, and nothing that reflects official board actions, is being removed, Holloway said.
While the records disposal may free up some cabinet space, it likely won’t do much to add maneuvering room inside the municipal building.
Commissioners and township staff members have, during the past two years, kicked around the idea of either building an extension to the increasingly crowded offices, which house both Lower Pottsgrove’s business operations and its police department, or finding new quarters. The issue was most recently mentioned in passing during a May (2009) commissioners’ meeting.
The prospect of incurring the cost of a move, however, is deemed by all as economically unfeasible now.
Related (to the Lower Pottsgrove Board of Commissioners’ meeting of July 23):
- Board Approves Interchange Mapping Costs
- Antiquated Files Headed For Township Shredder
- Commissioners OK Zoning Board Appointments
- No Need To Ask Them Twice
- Township Says No To Sunnybrook Grant, Citing Risks
- Commissioners Cancel Next Meeting
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I think it’s time that the township reviews it’s manpower and cut’s some staff in order to make more room in their posh digs. The other option would be to relocate the police operations to another facility. Perhaps an extention to the Sanatoga Fire Companies building at the rear and relocating the Police operations there? The township would add the lower level of their building to municiple office space and the police and fire operations would be co-located on a central location.
It’s time we start looking closely at our expenditures and our tax base / revenues. We’ve been spending an awful lot on new schools, etc. Imaging if we’d been smart and kept the old elementary school rather than giving it away for a pittance. Pleanty of facility space there….
Let’s start planning with the long term and the taxpayer in mind. Every dollar spent ought to be stretched for all it’s worth….