Two feet of rain, and a brand-new data processing system, arrived in town at about the same time last October. But after the rain swept away homes and inundated the town with mud, the Laserfiche Plus data storage-and-retrieval system made reconstruction efforts a lot easier.

Reconstruction may not be finished before mid-April, according to the New Braunfels Chamber of Commerce. “Our City Manager, Mike Shands, likes to go back and look at previous action by the city council, on things that have come back up for discussion. So when he’s asked a question, he can say ‘well this is what the council did last time this question came up,’” said City Clerk Bonnie Sarkozi. “And there’s been a lot to discuss as the cleanup and rebuilding continue.”

The flooding, on Oct. 17, caused one fatality, apparently from a heart attack, and inflicted major damage in and near the downtown section, where the unrelenting heavy rain sent flash floods roaring down two rivers and what’s usually a small creek. Homes and small industrial buildings were sluiced off their foundations; cars were swept away. Many people were housed in shelters and many months later were still homeless.

The Laserfiche system, purchased from DynaSource, LLC, of Beaumont,TX, had arrived a day or two earlier and had not yet been unwrapped. But within a week, DynaSource president Chuck Beard and his partner Pete Petry came up to install the new equipment and show Ms. Sarkozi’s team how to use it.

“The simplicity of it is what we’ve enjoyed the most,” Sarkozi said. In about three weeks, they were able to scan the minutes of all city council meetings going back to 1945¾ a four- or five-foot stack of oversized ledger books, 640 pages to the book¾ into a single pocket-sized CD. “Those books weigh 30 pounds apiece,” Sarkozi added.

“When somebody wanted a municipal record, we had to heft the book down, hope to find the right page in the index, photocopy it and hand it over. Now, it’s just a matter of tapping a few keys and walking over to the printer. We’re going to put those books in a safe place. We won’t need them any more.”

Now that they have compressed a half-century of city council minutes on to one compact disk, Sarkozi’s crew is looking for more worlds to conquer. “We’re going to do our resolutions, and all the city ordinances, deeds and easements,” she said. “Oh, we see so many uses for it. Just as soon as this city dries out a little bit.”

Tags: disaster recovery, Local Government, State and Local Government

Posted on Sunday, July 24th, 2005 at 11:28 am under Customer Stories, Municipal Government, State and Local Government. You can comment on this post.