New Shelves Help Ease Town Vault Crowding

By Steve Bigham

The town clerk’s office had some much-needed shelving installed in its crowded vault late last week. Town Clerk Cindy Simon believes the new slide shelving will provide enough storage to get Newtown through the next seven years. The future remains uncertain after that.

The shelves now hold the 650 books containing the town’s land records, taking the place of the less practical roller shelving. The town clerk’s office fills a book on average of every three weeks. That’s a total of 17 books per year.

So, while the shelves provide some relief, they are certainly not a permanent solution. Mrs Simon emphasized that point as she demonstrated the sliding mechanism on the new storage unit Tuesday morning.

“Seven years from now you should have a new town hall,” noted Bob Kenney, a title searcher who happened to be inside the vault Tuesday morning.

The town’s vault is as old and outdated as Edmond Town Hall itself. The 305-square-foot vault was installed during the construction of the building during the 1920s. Times have changed a great deal since then and the town’s population has increased significantly. In 1989, officials from the Connecticut State Library inspected the vault and found that it showed signs of overcrowding. It said the situation was “near critical” and that all attention must be given to ease the conditions within.

“We’ve been running out of space for a long time,” Mrs Simon said.

State guidelines require that the town clerk’s vault in towns with populations between 20,000 and 30,000 residents be no less than 1,000 square feet. Bethel’s vault is 4-5 times larger than the one in Newtown. However, despite the vault’s shortcomings, many attorneys and title searchers salute the work of Mrs Simon and her staff.

“Cindy’s records are the best in Fairfield County,” noted title searcher Ilse Berkeley.

The lateral mobile storage system was installed by Dupont Systems at a cost of $4,500. The money had been approved for the 2000-2001 budget.