WESTFIELD – Years of city birth, death, marriage records, engineering plans and other historical documents are scatted throughout City Hall and other municipal buildings, paper records, that if damaged, are not replaceable.
Historical Commission Chairwoman Kitt Milligan appeared before the Community Preservation Commission Thursday night to initiate a discussion of funding to preserve those records and to make electronic copies stored at an off-site repository.
Mayor Daniel M. Knapik requested the Historical Commission last fall to begin developing a document preservation plan, working with the City Clerk’s Office, as well as other municipal agencies that keep documents of the city and its residents, past and present.
“I’m here tonight to give you a heads up that we will be asking for some level of funding in the future,” Milligan said. “Preservation of historical records and documents is qualified for funding under the Community Preservation Act.”
The present repair work at City Hall was initiated in part to protect documents from damage by water seeping through the brick walls, especially in the vaults of the Engineering Department and City Clerk’s office. Roof leaks in the past have damaged records stored in attic areas.
“There are historical records of the city scattered throughout City Hall, some are at (Westfield Vocational Technical High School), some at other locations,” Milligan said. “There is no back-up to those records, if lost, the history of Westfield is sunk.”
“It is a priority of the Historical Commission to ensure preservation of our historical records,” Milligan said. “Eventually, we will gather all that matter, some of it will be organized and bound, but all of it will be scanned and electronic copies kept off site in case something catastrophic happens to this building.”
The Historical Commission has engaged in discussion with officials of the Town of Southwick, which is in the third years of a historic records preservation program and plan to bring a consultant to one of the commission meeting to begin assessing the scope of work for the city’s record preservation approach.
Milligan said that as the project planning process develops, the Historical Commission will have a better handle on the funding required and will return to the CPC to submit a formal funding request.
“There is information concerning every aspect of the city in these records, from family documents, to engineering documents,” Milligan said. “The Historical Commission asked that the arch section of the Pochassic Street bridge be preserved which challenged the engineers because those skill sets used to build that arch are no longer available, so the city researched documents to find engineering plans.”
Commissioner Vince Olinski said preservation of documents is “so critical” and that he experience the overwhelming task as a member of the Holyoke Volleyball Hall of Fame which spent 10 years collecting and organizing documents related to that sport invented in the City of Holyoke.
