Town records manager asks select committee to approve $3,000 for binding historic clerk books

Alicia Houssley, the town records manager, told the committee the expendable trust fund balance is $75,607.72 and that three town-clerk books dating from the 1950s to the 1980s have become unbound and need rebinding. She asked the committee to approve $3,000 to restore the most urgently damaged book and said estimates for restoration range from $1,500 to $3,000 per volume.

Committee members welcomed the immediate request but repeatedly pressed for a comprehensive records-retention plan and inventory before committing larger sums from the fund. One member noted that past conversations about rolling-file storage and larger expenditures lacked an implementation plan and asked for a clear list of all books needing work and an estimated total cost to guide multi-year funding decisions. Houssley said a records-retention committee was created in June and that her immediate goal is to restore the most at-risk volumes while the committee inventories records and recommends storage or digitization strategies.

"My goal this year is to restore some of our books," Houssley said when presenting the estimate and photos of the damaged volume. The committee advised she meet with the records-retention committee to produce an inventory and project plan to inform next year’s CIP recommendations.

Next steps: the committee agreed the immediate $3,000 request should be routed to the select board and trustees for approval as an expendable-trust expenditure but emphasized that larger, recurring requests will require a documented scope, number of bound books, vendor quotes and a 5–10 year funding plan.