Records Retention Committee

Under New Hampshire law, municipal governments are required to maintain all sorts of records of the town for various lengths of time – from one year to permanently. The statutes (RSA 33-A) provide very specific and detailed time frames for the retention of municipal records.

As part of the records retention efforts, the Town is to have a committee that is responsible for the disposition of municipal records as outlined in state law.

"Municipal records'' under the statutes is defined as all municipal records, reports, minutes, tax records, ledgers, journals, checks, bills, receipts, warrants, payrolls, deeds and any other written or computerized material that may be designated by the board.

Town officials have taken their responsibilities very seriously in terms of record retention and the preservation of municipal records that date back to the very beginning of the Town of Auburn. With most municipal records in the custody of the Town Clerk, a concerted effort has been made in the past 15 or so years to restore and preserve the Town’s records. Older, more historical documents have been professional restored, microfilmed and bound into ledger-style volumes. The minutes of all Town boards, committees and commissions have also been preserved and bound for easy reference. The Town has budgeted funding for this activity to perform some work every year on the preservation of records. The Town has also been successful in securing a couple of different grants in more recent years from the Secretary of State’s Office and the NH State Library to assist in this effort.

In the 1970s, the Town added a records storage vault to the Town Hall building. In 2013, the Town invested in a records storage system for the vault that has nearly doubled the storage capacity of the vault. In 2015, the Town is investing again in another records storage system that will nearly double the file storage capacity for the Town’s land use records that are housed in a first floor storage room built during the renovation of the Town Hall in 2010.

Appointed Officials, No term expirations.