Hutchinson County approves on-site scanning project for real property records

Hutchinson County commissioners approved a project to scan, index and upload historic real-property records so they can be accessible through the county's public Avenue portal.

The project, presented by Kelly (county clerk), would have TerraLogic come on-site to scan and index 21 bound volumes while Avenue would load the indexed files into its system. Kelly said Avenue would not perform on-site scanning unless a project exceeded $500,000. "They said that the project had to be over $500,000 in order to do that," she said.

Kelly told the court she obtained three quotes and recommended TerraLogic because it would scan on-site rather than take the record books off-site. "I've just always been taught by my predecessors before not to let those books leave our office," Kelly said. The transcript shows a separate line-item fee of $4,200 to have Avenue load the resulting files into its program; the figure recorded for TerraLogic's scanning and indexing quote was unclear in the audio transcript (transcript text: 170021086).

Commissioners asked whether the proposal had been included in the prior year’s budget; Kelly said the project was approved around budget time last year and that the vendor quotes were solicited thereafter. No commissioner requested the books be removed from county custody.

The court voted to approve the county clerk records management archive project with TerraLogic for on-site scanning and indexing and with Avenue to load the indexed files into the public portal. The motion was approved by voice vote.

County staff did not give a firm timeline for when scanning would begin, and the approved motion did not specify a final completion date. The county clerk indicated the county's longstanding practice is to keep original bound records onsite unless a vendor explicitly offers on-site scanning.