Wood County records dating before 1852 are now being kept at the West Virginia State Archives Division in Charleston. (Photo by Matty Lamp)

PARKERSBURG — At Thursday’s meeting of the Wood County Commission, updates to the new Wood County 911 Center were discussed, as well as the future of the old Wood County Sheriff’s Office and the court records it housed.

The former Wood County Sheriff’s Office, where the court records were previously being held, is planned to be demolished due to unsafe conditions.

“The building is in terrible condition. The roof leaks, and it’s amazing that there hasn’t been a fire down there,” said Wood County Commissioner Jimmy Colombo. “The records in there have been totally obsolete, been there 60 years.”

The Wood County Circuit Clerk’s office has been in the process of digitizing and shredding old records for five years, with an estimated 65,000 files scanned, according to Wood County Circuit Clerk Celeste Ridgway. Ridgway said on Thursday afternoon that the circuit clerk’s office began to scan each record to put in an online database after the sheriff’s office began to deteriorate and some of the records saw damage as a result.

The circuit clerk’s office contracted Gator Mobile Document Shredding at the end of March to load the scanned records and take them away to be shredded confidentially.

This book of court records housed in one of the file rooms in the Wood County Circuit Clerk’s office dates back to 1810. (Photo by Matty Lamp)

“We’ve already done a big shred of some of the files we’ve already scanned and permatized just to get rid of the paper file. The problem being, you’re moving thousands of files out of an old building that’s about to fall, and that creates a new storage problem for the county,” said Ridgway. “So, by us scanning them and digitizing them, that also does away with the issue of ‘where are we going to put all this?'”

Ridgway said there is a strict process that the circuit clerk’s office had to abide by in order to scan, store, and discard files the correct way according to the Supreme Court. All of the files can now be found digitally at the Wood County Circuit Clerk’s office for those who request to see them.

“My staff worked hand-in-hand with me, and we got this under control. I couldn’t be happier,” said Ridgway.”We have followed the guidelines of the Supreme Court with their retention schedule, and we’ve done very well at even some of those files that didn’t have to be scanned because they were past the retention time frame. We went ahead and scanned them, which I think is a big plus.”

For the records dating before 1852, Ridgway gave them to the West Virginia State Archives Division in Charleston, which houses records from different counties all over the state all in one place. She said the state archives freeze-dries their records to preserve them in the state that they are brought in.

The commission is exploring the idea of using shipping containers to house the remaining physical records temporarily as they make plans to accommodate the records in the new 911 center. They have not yet purchased these containers, but the commission estimates that they will cost less than $5,000 in total, and their bid limit is $25,000.

The Wood County Circuit Clerk’s Office started moving all records from the former Wood County Sheriff’s Office in March. (Photo by Matty Lamp)

“In our new 911 center, there’s about one third of it that’s just empty. We have sprinklers in there, two entrances, because we plan that to be a repository for county records,” said Commission President Blair Couch. “We’re blessed to have a great circuit clerk who got rid of a lot of stuff.”

The commission said during the meeting that they also plan to use the extra room in the former 911 center to house all of the county voting machines, which are currently being stored in multiple locations.

“They need to be in a climate controlled atmosphere,” said Wood County Clerk Joe Gonzalez. “One county didn’t, and theirs molded. They lost a million-something worth of voting equipment.”

“The way we’re able to store our voting machines here, they will be the most secure voting machines in the state of West Virginia. Nobody will beat that,” says Couch. “Twenty-four-hour security, people on site.”

Some of the other topics covered in Thursday’s meeting included a mental hygiene response team for Wood County with the help of the Mid-Ohio Valley Health Department and the Wood County Sheriff’s Office, increased spending within county corrections, and positive feedback for the Camden Clark Ambulance Services’ efficiency with responding to calls.

The former Wood County Sheriff’s Office has structural and water damage. (Photo by Matty Lamp)

Matty Lamp can be reached at intern@newsandsentinel.com.