Whitefish Bay Goes Digital With Property Records

Roughly 250,000 pages of property records at Whitefish Bay Village Hall will soon be converted to electronic files.

The Village Board voted Monday night to allocate nearly $67,000 for the conversion of paper property records to electronic records, which Village Manager Patrick DeGrave said will improve residents' access to property records, reduce office clutter and reduce the work load for village office staff.

The board accepted DeGrave's proposal to purchase two high-speed scanners and a scanning workstation that will scan the front and back of all the village's blueprints and property records. When a resident is about to purchase or remodel a house, they will be able to view the electronic file on a computer kiosk at the front desk. They will also have the option of emailing the file to themselves or purchasing a thumb drive to store the entire file.

"That's going to be more user friendly for our customers, take some of the load off the front office staff who fulfills these requests, free up a lot of room, and put us into the digital age," DeGrave said.

The Village Board approved a $66,885 contract with Mike Armstrong Consulting, which will purchase the necessary equipment and scan in all of the village's existing documents. Village employees will be responsible for scanning in documents in the future.

The village chose to purchase their own servers instead of contracting with Data Dimensions, because even though Data Dimension's initial cost estimate was $48,199, its annual fee of $6,708 and monthly scanning fee of $150 would have eclipsed the cost of Armstrong's plan after three years.

The board's purchase was drawn from $347,000 in savings made possible by changing the way the village contracts for health insurance. Even though the board has managed to save money through health insurance, Village Trustee Jay Miller said the board should be careful not to spend the extra money too liberally.

"It should be a means to an end, such as saving us money or reducing staff time," he said.

DeGrave said digitizing the records will make operations more efficient at the front desk and allow employees to focus on more strategic, long-term initiatives. He said he also hopes to digitize other records, such as utility bills, in the future.

The Village Board also used $11,200 of the health insurance savings Monday night for a projector in the Village Board meeting room, which would include a ceiling-mounted power screen, a short-throw projector lens and a lockable cabinet to secure the projector.

Another $4,250 in health insurance savings was used to digitize zoning and setback maps into the village's existing GIS system, which was purchased in 2011.

"I saw these three items as ways we can improve efficiency, modernize the organization and move us forward," DeGrave said.