KINGWOOD — Preston County government officials are pursuing grants to help update equipment and procedures.
Assessor Connie Ervin and County Clerk Linda Huggins spoke with county commissioners Tuesday about grants for their office.
Ervin said Andy Lipscomb, a recent hire in the assessor’s office, asked why personal property documents were handled about five times?
“And the answer was, ‘Because that’s how we’ve always done it,’” Ervin said.
Lipscomb suggested scanning the records and making them available to all workers digitally. Ervin said they visited two counties and, as a result, changed how the documents are filed in her office. Instead of filing them by district, they will be filed alphabetically all together.
“It’s just a whole mentality change for everyone in the office,” Ervin said.
Now Ervin would like to apply for a $10,000 records management and preservation grant through the state. There is a $1,000 match.
That would buy four desktop scanners and a large-format scanner, and cover some salaries. The second phase of the work will be to scan in 75,000 personal property returns — five year’s worth — as required by state records retention statutes.
“That scanning will require a little bit more care,” Ervin said, because of maps and research notes attached.
Lipscomb said as documents are scanned, the software will automatically put them in the system in the order or format chosen by the office. It will be available on the network and a great time saver, he said.
Commissioners Samantha Stone and Don Smith asked Ervin to check with the county’s IT director on whether there will be space in the county’s Cloud storage for all the scanned documents. Commissioner Dave Price was absent.
Smith noted the scanning will also free physical space in Ervin’s office.
“I’m all for this,” Smith said, noting he suggested to Ervin two years ago she look into scanning when she requested funds to buy an additional file cabinet.
“It’s a fantastic job to get your office up to speed and where we need to be,” Stone told Ervin.
Lipscomb said the scanning will also provide an added level of security of the research and personal property returns. “Since 2008, there’s a lot of research in those cabinets. So if there’s a fire, that research is gone,” he said.
Preston County Clerk Linda Huggins also came to the commission about a grant, but hers has already been approved. Her office received a $26,060 Help America Vote Act (HAVA) grant to buy additional election equipment.
She got commission approval to order the equipment.
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