Oxnard Council to Consider Pitching Some Old City Files : Government: The proposal would change current procedure. Storing 7,000 boxes of documents costs the pack rat record keepers $43,000 yearly.

Paperwork can truly become a burden--just ask Oxnard officials.

The city’s record keepers have been such pack rats that Oxnard has 7,000 boxes of documents dating back to its incorporation in 1903, most of which has to be stored and managed by a private company.

As a result, the city now spends about $43,000 a year to store old agendas, reports, newspaper clippings and other paperwork.

Even allowing for public records laws that require some documents to be kept for five years or more, much of Oxnard’s records could be pitched, officials say, and the City Council today will consider a proposal to send piles of old papers to the recycling bin.

The source of the problem is that destroying city records currently requires City Council approval. Most city departments end up keeping everything due to the tedium of preparing detailed listings of records to be destroyed for council examination.

Some departments have been saving magazines, brochures and equipment manuals for years.

The new plan would allow departments to throw away most documents themselves. Disposal of records classified as significant would have to be approved by the city attorney.

And to ensure that important papers are saved as long as is legally required, records of the records would be kept.

Oxnard recently hired a private consulting firm to supervise the city’s summer cleaning and give advice on future record keeping. Savage Information Systems of Los Angeles prepared extensive schedules for each city department, reminding them which papers need to be saved and how long they should be kept.

“A lot of times people store things because they don’t know what else to do with them,” City Clerk Daniel Martinez said. “This will prevent that kind of thing from taking place.”

Under the new plan, City Council agendas would be saved for two years, budget files three years, deed files five years, and agreements 20 years after they are void. City Council minutes, along with maps, drawings and anything deemed to have historical value, would be saved permanently.

The city keeps most of its old papers at York Business Records in Oxnard, a large warehouse complex which stores truckloads of paperwork for area companies. In addition to the yearly fee, York charges the city a fee every time workers move a box from the company’s Gargantuan stacks.

To reduce the amount of paperwork in storage, thousands of boxes would have to be taken down so their contents can be evaluated and thrown away, a process that would cost the city thousands of dollars.

“It will cost money at first,” acknowledged Martinez, “But it will save money in the long run. If you have a box sitting in storage 10 years that should have been thrown away five years ago, you’re wasting a lot.”

Scouring the records for what should be kept and what should be thrown away could take years. But each department would eventually know when boxes in storage could be destroyed, and storage fees would be cut to about $25,000, Martinez said.