Chester public records get room to grow

By Shawn Cunningham
©2015 Telegraph Publishing

The vault floor leveled, with tracks about to be secured to the floor.  All photos by Shawn Cunningham. Click any photo to launch gallery.

The records of a town take up a lot of space after 254 years.  And during her tenure as Chester Town Clerk, Deb Aldrich has watched the 162-square-foot vault used to protect town records grow tighter and tighter.

A Vermont statute mandates that a town have “a fireproof safe or vault of a sufficient size for the effectual preservation of the files and records” so Aldrich, who has been town clerk since 2005, was faced with two choices. Chester could spring for the construction of a new, larger vault (an expensive proposition) or it could find a cost-effective way to make the space more efficient.

The track and chain mechanism.

Enter Ronald Keith of Dupont Storage Systems, which manufactures high-density storage shelving that moves on tracks. Keith told the Chester Select Board back in April that Chester is not unique. “Everybody is running out of space,” said Keith, noting that his company has sold storage units to 35 to 40 town governments in Vermont including Bellows Falls, Westminster and Springfield. The moveable shelves reduce the number of aisles needed to access records to one. Each move of a shelving unit closes one aisle and opens another.

Two double-sided moveable shelves installed. Turning the handle of one unit moves it sideways and creates a new aisle.

Keith estimates that the new shelving will give the town as much as 50 years of additional use of the vault. On Wednesday July 9, Aldrich said that she would be experimenting to find the most efficient way to store the town’s records while keeping access to them convenient.

While state law does not say which records must be kept in the vault, generally those documents that affect the running of town government and show ownership of property are stored there. These “forever” documents include land records, grand lists, vital records, minutes of public boards, plat maps, town reports and town record books.

In addition to the added storage, the work table that was in the vault was removed to add space and increase accountability for the records.

The cost of the shelving, which was $17,741 after $934 discount, included a two-day installation that took place on Tuesday and Wednesday, July 7 and 8. The down-payment of  $7,500 was made from the records preservation line in the town budget, while the Select Board agreed to Dupont’s financing arrangement that will see the balance being paid by April 1, 2016.

A view from the back of the vault looking out with new storage shelving to the left.