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City clerk outlines rising complexity of public‑records requests, Project Elephant records initiative and proposed offboarding declaration
Summary
City clerks reported growing volume and complexity of public‑records requests, a 2023 cost report of roughly $912,000 (including litigation), a new Project Elephant effort to remove roughly 1,300 paper boxes from Iron Mountain storage and a proposed policy requiring departing officials to declare they turned over public records.
Deputy City Manager Rachel Bianchi and the City Clerk’s Office updated the Sammamish City Council on May 13 about public‑records operations, rising request complexity, a paper‑records management effort called “Project Elephant” and a proposed policy change to require departing employees and elected officials to execute a records‑turnover declaration.
Amber Anderson, Deputy City Clerk, and Sabrina Otnis, the city’s Public Records Officer, described how the city categorizes requests into four classes. They said the city receives more category‑2, 3 and 4 requests this year than last and that many large requests cover multiple subject matters, many people and several years of communications — producing hundreds of thousands of items that…
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