O’CONNELL: COUNTY RECORDS CENTER PLAYS A FUNDAMENTAL ROLE IN COUNTY GOVERNMENT

(MINEOLA – February 9, 2006) “Under water, moldy, leaky roofs and utter disorganization is how you would describe the conditions of the warehouse that is adjacent to the County’s Record Center,” stated newly elected County Clerk Maureen O’Connell.  Pointing to pictures of the disarray found in the building’s warehouse, the County Clerk announced that a cooperative effort led by her office, in conjunction with New York State Archives, will assist and train county departments to inventory all the records that are located in the warehouse and implement a program that will focus on bringing the records to state and county code so that they can be placed in the County’s Record Center.  “This [Center] is very important and with everyone’s cooperation it can be a valuable asset for Nassau County,” added O’Connell.

The County’s Record Center, which is housed in the former King Kullen warehouse in Westbury, has been subject to many renovations, including the move of many departments into the facility. “Currently, we are aggressively pursuing a plan to organize the records left in the warehouse before the 911 Communications System is brought into the building,” began O’Connell.  “The records contained on this side of the building are from different county departments, and are subject to legal minimum retention periods; they can only be disposed of in a proper manner. To effectuate this plan, we have designed an action plan that would clean up, organize and inventory all the records so they can be properly placed in the Records Center. Once this is accomplished, the Department of Real Estate & Planning can prepare for the proper disposal and destruction of records according to state destruction procedures,” continued the Clerk.  

“Thousands of boxes are in this area and we will be meeting with representatives of each of the departments as we put into action our plan.  As a result of our initial step, we have been able to process more than 300 boxes of old records,” she added.

“The function of the County Records Center is to receive, store and retrieve inactive records for all County Departments; this is in addition to County Clerk records, which are retrieved on a daily basis,” stated the Clerk. “After reviewing the records management program in Nassau County and the records stored, I can appreciate the significance of maintaining and preserving records that not only document the functioning of County government, but also preserves vital county records that dates back to the 1890’s,” concluded O’Connell.