MINUTES
Tuesday, August 25, 1998
Salisbury Town Clerk's Office

PRESENT:

• John Cushing
• John Howland
• Pattie McCoy
• Gregory Sanford
• Joe Jaminet
• Patty Smith

Chair John Cushing called the meeting to order at 9:35 a.m.. On motion of Pattie McCoy and second of John Cushing, minutes from the July 28th meeting were approved.

John Cushing began discussion on taking public testimony. It was agreed to hold two public hearings, tentatively scheduled for October 8th and October 20th. There was some discussion of holding the first meeting on October 6th in conjunction with the Auditor of Account's meeting on Year 2000 compliance.

John Cushing and Pattie McCoy will confirm dates and locations of meetings and will alert municipal clerks. Once times and locations are determined, John Howland and Jim Knapp will alert the lawyers, paralegals, and legislators, while Gregory Sanford will alert surveyors.

John Cushing discussed having a handout for clerks attending the public hearings and perhaps for the annual Vermont Municipal Clerks' and Treasurers' Association meeting. Handouts would briefly outline what the committee's charge is and include questions for further information gathering. Gregory Sanford will provide committee members some questions, based on his research to date, and committee members will refine the questions.

The committee then reviewed Gregory Sanford's first draft for a committee report. There was general agreement that the history, environment, and background sections were okay as written. John Cushing suggested that the Year 2000 issue be added to the environment section. Pattie McCoy noted, as part of environment, the lack of linkage among computer programs used by clerks, listers, treasurers, and other local government entities and the range of environments, skills and practices among the 246 towns and cities.

Most of the committee discussion focussed on findings and recommendations. Topics discussed included:

• Any efforts to computerize land records must be phased in over time.
• The first phase must be developing guidelines for the computerized indexing of land records.
• There should be no state mandates and any computerization guidelines should be couched in the approach, if you choose to computerize your index to land records, the following steps are recommended.
• Indexing or any other potential computerization phases must be linked to providing clerks with sustained education, with a consistent curriculum, on the use of computers.
• Education should be progressive, so clerks can move from basic to more sophisticated computer skills; should be practical and hands-on rather than theoretical; and should be offered in cycles in order to be available for new clerks and staff.
• There was some discussion on how to fund such an educational program and who should provide it, with general interest in exploring the possibility of working with the state college system.
• If an oversight committee to address municipal record and computerization issues was recommended, what should be its composition, where should it be placed administratively (state or local government entity), what specific issues should it focus on (ranging from guidelines to creating model software packages), how it would it present any recommendations, and how would it be funded? Several members strongly felt that it should not be a state entity and, again, felt it should only recommend, not mandate, practices.
• What issues such a body should consider was discussed, with agreement that quality control issues were important to assure the accuracy and reliability of any computerized indices. Some of the members noted that users of land records currently wanted hard copy, rather than computerized, indices because of quality control concerns and that many users did not have the skills to search computerized indices.
• There was some discussion of whether an oversight body would develop accreditation criteria for town offices.
• The need for a funded commission to continue the work of the study committee was discussed as a way of addressing issues that the current committee did not have the technological knowledge or resources to pursue.
• The failure of the state government to provide guidelines for electronic records practices for itself or to adequately fund and support its own technology and records entities was noted and compared to the committee's mandate to explore computerization of land records in 246 municipalities with different conditions and practices and a tradition of independence.
• The committee expressed the desire that the report to the General Assembly be short and precise.

Gregory Sanford was instructed to continue to work on the draft report and offer a new draft to the committee with adequate time for full review prior to the next meeting.

Next meeting will held in conjunction with the public hearing tentatively set for October 6th or 8th. John Cushing will inform the committee of the date, time and place. The meeting adjourned at 11:35.