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East Canton council considers SharePoint subscription to digitize village records
Summary
Councilors heard a proposal to use SharePoint and a third-party consultant to digitize ordinances, maps and meeting packets to protect archives and improve access; initial costs and scanning labor were discussed but no final vote was taken.
The Village of East Canton council on Wednesday reviewed a proposal to use SharePoint to store and share municipal records, maps and meeting materials in digital form.
Fiscal staff told the council the subscription would be used to upload meeting packets, scanned ordinances and historical zoning and construction maps so staff and, if permitted, residents could access them online. The proposal was presented as a way to protect paper archives from loss in a fire or other disaster and to make materials searchable and easier to share among village departments.
In explaining the plan, staff said BlueTech Consulting prepared a proposal to host the village files in SharePoint and that some existing digital copies are already stored to Carbonite and individual staff computers. The line items discussed included a recurring SharePoint fee (described as about $5 per month for basic hosting), an initial setup fee estimated in the low hundreds of dollars, and additional scanning labor that would be charged separately. Officials said a practical startup figure for initial work would be “about $1,000” including setup but excluding extensive scanning labor, which would depend on the volume of material to be converted.
Councilors discussed how the village would structure access, with staff noting SharePoint allows password-protected folders and selective access for the chief, the fiscal officer and others. Staff said scanned materials could include ordinance books, signed copies of ordinances, historical maps for the Hope Village and Fultz Building, and other records kept in the upstairs storage. The presenter said some packet PDFs are already compiled and that moving them to SharePoint would make them easier to retrieve and preserve.
The fiscal officer told the council the initial subscription and setup costs could be paid from the fiscal officer’s budget and said the village could cancel the subscription if it did not meet needs. No formal motion or vote occurred; staff said they would begin coordinating with the village IT contact and department heads to scope the scanning workload and return with cost details.
Next steps: staff will contact BlueTech Consulting and village IT to prepare a more detailed cost and implementation plan and report back to the council at a future meeting.
