Ouray County commissioners agreed in a work session Aug. 27 to extend the county's email retention period from 25 months to 48 months, a change county IT staff said they can implement administratively.

The proposal was presented by Jeff Bridal, IT manager, who said, "We are proposing to extend the retention period for email from its current 25 months up to 48 months." Bridal told commissioners the change responds to "technology and staff capabilities" that make handling large open-records requests easier and to department concerns that the shorter retention "is coming up a little short." Legal staff and records personnel supported the proposal during the discussion.

Why it matters: Extending retention increases the time officials and staff can retrieve institutional records for ongoing projects, long-running permitting matters and election-related inquiries. Legal staff warned that longer retention can raise risk in litigation or large subpoena responses but said the county's improved tooling and staffing make the change feasible.

Key points from the discussion:
- Decision vs. discussion: Commissioners reached consensus to move to 48 months during the work session; Bridal said the change can be made administratively under the county's records policy. The board did not record a formal roll-call vote during the session.
- Chat and messaging: Bridal said Google Chat retention would remain at 90 days and reminded staff that "substantive matters" should be moved from chat to email for recordkeeping.
- Commercial data requests: Leo (legal staff) described a recent commercial data-mining request and said the county will continue to resist requests that require creating new datasets or programming. He noted the county is not required to create new documents for open-records requests.
- Fees and costs: Legal and records staff said the current fee rate is $33.58 per hour and said they are considering raising it to the statutorily allowed $40'to $41 per hour to better reflect staff time on very large requests. No formal fee change was adopted at the meeting; staff said they will return with formal recommendations if needed.
- Volume and impact: Records staff said the county has seen an increase in broad requests and data-scraping activity, including repetitive or form-letter requests that can "gum up the works." Staff described one earlier request that generated about $1,000 in processing costs and involved several gigabytes of data.

What remains unsettled: Commissioners and staff discussed whether some records should have longer or different retention schedules (for example, records tied to multi-year permitting or elected officials'terms). Commissioners suggested the 48-month change be monitored and revisited if necessary.

What happens next: Bridal said IT will implement the 48-month retention administratively and will work with legal and departments on procedures. Staff also said they will continue outreach and training about archiving best practices and litigation holds.

Ending note: Commissioners emphasized balancing transparency and public-records obligations with legal risk and staff workload; the 48-month change was presented as a practical compromise that can be reexamined later.