Communities Receive State Archives Funds

The City of Cortland's Police Department and the Village of Homer received word they were awarded State Archives funding from the NYS Education Department. These funds are awarded under the Local Government Records Management Improvement Fund. With Thoma's assistance, the City was awarded $13,773 and the Village received $10,577.

The City of Cortland's Police Department contains a secure Police Records Department room that contains sensitive and highly confidential inactive records. These records have not been inventoried and purged in many years and need to be re-boxed and stored in State recommended storage boxes. This application was unique in that the State granted funds to pay for a full time officer's overtime pay to undertake the task of inventorying, re-boxing, and possibly purging these records, insuring that only an officer with the proper security clearance will have file access.

The Village of Homer is fortunate to have a staff member, Dawn Stevens, who has a Geographic Information System (GIS) background. Dawn has been using GIS in a limited manner to computerize mapping records of the municipally-owned Glenwood Cemetery. It is the Village's belief that GIS can be further utilized to provide many layers of needed information to assist in mapping plot locations, record keeping, genealogy searches, sales, deed searches, etc. Additionally, there are other Village departments that could take advantage of a GIS system, particularly the water and sewer department. The Village's State Archives grant will fund a GIS Needs Assessment, prepared by a qualified consulting firm, which will contain recommendations regarding the best computer hardware to purchase, networking recommendations, and the best uses of proprietary ArcView software.

It is important to note that the due date for State Archives applications has been moved forward this year to December 1, 2004 and will continue to be the first workday in December from now on. Please contact us if you need further information related to State Archives applications.