The city of Snoqualmie’s budget for the year 1923 was set at $1,874.16. The first city ordinance – or law – was developed a year after Snoqualmie became incorporated in 1902. The ordinance set the time and day for City Council meetings.

Inside the leather books, ledgers, file cabinets and folders that crowd a slightly chilled, roughly 10-by-20-foot vault in City Hall are numerous pages noting the city of Snoqualmie’s City Council meeting minutes, ordinances and resolution records dating from 1902 to the present.

“Old [city] records are always interesting to read,” said Snoqualmie City Clerk Jodi Warren.

Soon, those records will also be easy to access.

Currently, legislative action archives for Snoqualmie’s City Council are available to the public by making a public records request through City Hall, followed by a probable archive search through thousands of pages.

Early next year, those same documents from Snoqualmie’s more than 100-year history will be accessible online.

“I was pleased to learn about getting the grant for archiving all the City Council records,” said Snoqualmie Mayor Fuzzy Fletcher in an e-mail. “City staff did an awesome job putting the grant application together.”

Selected as one of 16 recipients of the 2005-2007 Washington State Local Records Grant Program to receive full or partial grants, the city of Snoqualmie was awarded $2,000 by the Washington State Archives Oversight Committee.

According to the award letter mailed to Warren from the state, the purpose of the grant is to “support local public records management and the preservation efforts … through the Archives and Records Management Division’s Local Records Grant Program.”

The money will fund the work of archiving original city documents properly by creating microfilm backup of the documents, scanning them and uploading them into an online electronic repository. The grant does not include funding for shelving.

“I think it will be interesting to be able to look back and see some of the history of the city online. Of course, it will also be great to always be able to go online and see what is happening now in the city of Snoqualmie,” Fletcher added.

“The minutes represent the history, the flavor and the people [of Snoqualmie],” Warren said. “The minutes reflect the background for the community that we have today.”

Warren said that many of the original minutes, ordinances and resolutions from 1902 to the 1950s were handwritten in pen or pencil, or typewritten in now fading ink on thin, onion-skinned paper.

The records need a climate-controlled environment or else they will (soon) disintegrate, she noted, adding that if the records remain in their current location, they would probably be destroyed within the next 100 years.

With the grant, the original records will be placed in the custody of the Washington State Regional Archives facility in Bellevue for security and preservation.

Warren said the city applied to the relatively new state grants program for three reasons: so the essential records will be backed up by microfilm for accessibility and security in case the originals are destroyed; to properly preserve the records; and to make the information readily available to those who want it.

The grant program reviewed 18 applications before making its selections.

Warren said that she applied in July of this year and was notified of the grant award on Nov. 17 through a letter from Secretary of State Sam Reed.

“I think it’s really exciting for the city archives,” said regional archivist Michael Saunders.

Though not an application reviewer, Saunders did provide input after the selection process regarding how to best proceed with the proposals. He and Warren had held preliminary discussions about the idea, so when she applied for – and won – the grant, which he described as streamlined in process but narrow in scope, he said he was not surprised.

The application required applicants to come up with an idea for how the grant would be used in relation to records and then write a proposal, Warren explained.

“As a city clerk, I am the custodian of public records,” she said. “It’s my responsibly to ensure that essential records for the city of Snoqualmie are preserved and secured.”

Warren said she has been preparing the documents for transfer by removing staples, unfolding pages and developing keywords to be used in the online searches.

When finished, she and Saunders will hand deliver the legal documents to Olympia, where the Imaging and Preservation Services Program of the Washington State Archives and Records Management Division will process the records, scanning the originals into PDFs.

By January or early February, Warren said she expects the electronic version to be ready for uploading onto the city’s official Web site, which is expected to soon be upgraded.

By March 2006, she said the public should be able to access the documents online.

“Records are crucial,” Warren said. “I can’t imagine how [the city] would go on without these records … [The records] are pretty important to a municipality.”