Contractor to Scan More Than 1 Million Building Department Files

Earlier this summer, a trustee's shock at the mountain of unorganized paperwork at the building department prompted him to declare the village "is ass backwards."

Now, a municipal contractor will help current building and code department staffers clean up the mess left by their predecessors, with the eventual goal of putting the files in a publicly-accessible database.

Rochester-based General Code will pick up the first batch of files on Sept. 23, starting what local leaders call "phase one" of their plan to bring order to the chaos at the building department.

The cost? $167,144 to organize and scan more than a million documents, which averages out to about six cents per page..

The company, which specializes in municipal files, has already prioritized documents for the first phase, said Assistant Village Manager Christopher Steers.

"There's a lot of duplicate information in these files, and the onus is on us" to remove duplicates, Steers told trustees.

The board had discussed the option last year, and the push to hire General Code picked up steam earlier this summer, after Trustee Sam Terenzi visited the building department.

Part of the plan, Trustee Dan Brakewood said at the time, was to make the files available to the public, as well as code enforcement inspectors, who will be able to pull the documents up on smartphones and PDAs while they're out of the office.

As the village continues its push to modernize its departments and erase the legacy of alleged corruption dating back two decades, local leaders say the move will remove the tether keeping inspectors at their desks, freeing up more time for them to accomplish their primary tasks -- personally inspecting homes in Port Chester.

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