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City clerk outlines public records workload, proposes 'offboarding' declarations and 'Project Elephant' to reduce paper storage costs
Summary
The city clerk's office reported rising complexity and costs for category 3–4 public records requests, previewed a proposed offboarding declaration for departing officials and staff, and described 'Project Elephant' — an effort to remove ~1,300 boxes from Iron Mountain and create a more accessible repository.
The Sammamish City Clerk’s Office updated the council on May 13 about public records workload trends, proposed policy changes for offboarding personnel, and launched "Project Elephant," a multi‑year plan to retrieve and manage approximately 1,300 boxes of paper records currently stored off site.
Rachel Bianchi, deputy city manager, introduced the presentation and Amber Anderson, deputy city clerk, and Sabrina Otnis, public records officer, reviewed the city’s public records process. Otnis said the city receives requests across a broad range of record types and that the Public Records Act requires an agency to respond within five business days with at least one of the enumerated responses. She said most requests are category 1 (small, easily retrievable records) but the city is seeing more category 2–4 requests that require multi‑department searches, legal review and installment production; category 4 requests can take more than a year to fulfill.
Anderson summarized trends: she said the city typically has 40–55 open requests in process weekly, many category 3 and 4, and that recent category 3/4 requests often bundle multiple subjects and date ranges and seek many forms of communications (emails, texts, Teams messages, social media and personal devices). Staff said the increased complexity leads to large search volumes and significant staff time. The presentation noted the city reported to the Legislature’s audit committee (JLARC) that 2023 public records costs exceeded $912,000, with more than $340,000 attributed to litigation related to public records.
To reduce future workload and improve access, the clerk’s office proposed two measures. First, staff said they would present a policy amendment (planned for council consent on June 3) to require departing staff, elected officials and commissioners to sign an offboarding declaration confirming they have turned over public records from personal devices and accounts. Second, the office introduced "Project Elephant," a records management effort to retrieve roughly 1,300 boxes from Iron Mountain (storage costing about $30,000–$40,000 per year), apply the updated state retention schedule, digitize frequently requested records and create a public repository to allow some records to be accessed in a self‑service way.
Council members asked operational questions and offered support. Council member Stewart asked about use of AI to assist with requests; staff said scanning and metadata work is a prerequisite to self‑service and that they were monitoring AI developments but want to follow state clerks association guidance and law before adopting AI tools for public records review. Deputy Mayor Amy Lam asked for JLARC 2024 numbers (staff said the 2023 JLARC report is public and 2024 will be available after summer reporting). Staff said when installments are produced they provide a download link and will close requests if an installment is not downloaded within a specified timeframe.
Ending: The clerk’s office will bring a proposed offboarding policy amendment to council and seek approval for next steps and funding for Project Elephant; staff said retrieval and review will be phased because of workload and cost, and that better access should improve service and reduce long‑term storage costs.
