7:41 p.m. EDT, July 29, 2013
BERLIN — A pending upgrade of town hall copiers will include built-in fax machines and built-in scanners, allowing the town to eliminate separate fax machines that were prime means of communication before email became commonly used.
The scanners will allow workers to easily copy documents to attach to emails. Such email attachments are a big reason for the decrease in official faxed communications at town hall.
Jim Wren, the town finance director who researched the new leasing of copiers, said Monday that most of the documents his staff receives and sends out now come via email as electronic files, instead of as paper records via fax.
"That's true in general. More and more of the documents are scanned and sent electronically these days," he said
The $36,035 yearly lease for new Toshiba copiers will save the town about $2,000 from current copy machine leasing costs, and will probably save more because most individual fax machines will be eliminated and underused printers will be removed. It's hard to say how much savings will occur until the exact number of unnecessary printers is determined, Wren said.
"We're not getting the number of faxes we used to receive," Town Manager Denise McNair told the town council prior to its approval last week of the leasing of the new machines from Office Works, a leasing firm associated with Toshiba.
The new devices should be in town hall, the library, the animal control office and other municipal buildings by September.
The increasing use of email might mean a decrease in, but not the elimination of, paper usage at town hall.
Kate Wall, the town clerk whose office is the legal keeper of town records, said that her staff still needs faxes, especially for copies of certified documents.
"The demand for hard copy on paper will always exist in our office," she said.