CANMORE – Efforts to digitize all of the Town of Canmore's planning and development documents have turned out to be more expensive that originally thought.
Council approved $35,000 in the 2020 capital budget for the project, but municipal clerk Cheryl Hyde was in front of council at the beginning of January to request an additional $85,000 to complete the project.
"We have thousands of files that are the history of development in Canmore; they are paper and they are unique," Hyde said. "But they are also subject to damage and loss."
She told elected officials plans to digitize the files have been in the works for several years, but a quick analysis of the number of files led to the estimated budget of $35,000.
"Over the last year, we have had staff going through the files and really getting an understanding of what we have," Hyde said. "It turned out to be a lot more than we thought ... we do need more funding than we originally requested."
About 500 boxes were packed up; however, only enough of them to make up the originally approved budget were sent to the company contracted to scan the paper documents and create the digital records.
Hyde said the municipality's planning and development department uses these files on a daily basis, but they are all unique and cannot be reproduced. By digitizing them, she said they will be available as PDFs and searchable.
Council voted unanimously to support the motion to increase the total budget to $120,000.
"I acknowledge the importance of maintaining these paper records for future needs," said Mayor John Borrowman.
