Planning a Records Room for a Utah City or County Office

Records storage that follows the retention schedule, not the other way around

Almost every Utah city hall, county building and special district office has a room that started as spare storage and slowly became the records room. Boxes arrive from the clerk, the treasurer, building permits and human resources; nothing leaves because nobody is sure what can. When that room is finally full, the question put to a shelving supplier is usually “how many more boxes can you fit in here?” The better question is “which records actually need to live here, for how long, and how often will someone pull them?”

This guide walks through that planning sequence for Utah governmental entities. It supports our Utah mobile shelving page, which covers the systems themselves, and focuses on the records side: the retention and custody rules that decide what stays on site, how Utah State Archives box standards shape the shelving, and when a high-density mobile shelving system is the right answer instead of more static shelving or an off-site transfer.

It is general planning guidance, not legal advice. Your appointed records officer and the Utah Division of Archives and Records Service (DARS) are the authorities on your record series; our job is to turn the answer into a room that works.

Why Utah government records rooms fill up

Three things combine to push paper into local-government storage rooms:

• Retention schedules run long. DARS describes a retention schedule as a roadmap for how long to keep a group of records (a record series) and what to do with them once they no longer have value. Some series are short; others are permanent.
• Custody stays with the office. Utah’s records rule for the State Records Center (R17-6) says that when an agency has not transferred records, it remains the agency’s responsibility to manage, maintain and destroy them according to the approved schedule.
• Someone is accountable. Under Utah Code 63A-12-103, each governmental entity’s chief administrative officer appoints records officers responsible for the care, maintenance, scheduling, disposal, classification and preservation of records.

The practical result is a steady inflow and a slow, approval-driven outflow. A records room has to be planned for the balance between the two, not just for today’s box count.

Decide custody first: on site, State Records Center or State Archives

Before sizing any shelving, sort each record series by where it should physically live. DARS publishes a straightforward comparison of its two facilities, summarized below. Check the “format management” section of each series in your retention schedule to see where it is meant to go.

Two planning consequences follow. First, anything that needs quick, frequent retrieval (current case files, recent minutes, active permits) belongs on site regardless of what the Records Center could hold. Second, series that have not yet been scheduled cannot go to the Records Center at all, so a room full of unscheduled boxes is often a scheduling problem before it is a shelving problem. For a broader cost and access comparison, see our guide to off-site versus on-site records storage.

Inventory what will stay before you buy shelving

A good records-room design starts with a spreadsheet, not a floor plan. For each record series you expect to keep on site, capture:

Once the inventory is in cubic feet, it maps directly to shelf openings. Our mobile shelving capacity sizing guide shows the arithmetic for turning that number into sections and carriages, including growth allowance.

Plan the shelving around the box

Utah State Archives publishes specific box standards for records going to the State Records Center and State Archives. Even if a series will stay in your building, planning around those boxes keeps it ready to transfer later without re-boxing:

• Records Center boxes are specially contracted to State Archives specifications, including a 35 pound maximum box weight.
• DARS asks offices to replace hanging folders and three-ring binders with labeled manila folders so lids fit snugly, to keep one record series per box, and to leave about three fingers of space between folders.
• Each box gets a printed inventory inside, with a copy kept in the office.

For shelving, that means planning shelf depth and opening height around a standard records box rather than around the folders in today’s cabinets. Records-center style shelving is usually laid out one or two boxes deep, with openings set just above box height so no space is wasted between levels.

State archives elsewhere publish useful shelving rules of thumb that apply equally in Utah. Washington State Archives, for example, notes that a standard archives box is about 10.75 inches tall and needs at least 11.25 inches of vertical opening, and that the lowest shelf should sit at least six inches off the floor to protect records from water. New York State Archives’ guidance on inactive records recommends leaving a few inches between shelving and walls for air circulation. Those details belong in the drawing, not in a note after installation. Our shelf depth and level spacing guide goes deeper on openings for boxes, binders and files.

Where high-density mobile shelving fits in a government records room

Mobile shelving puts shelving ranges on carriages that roll along floor rails, so a room needs one moving aisle instead of an aisle for every range. In a records room that is mostly boxes and files, that typically lets the same floor area hold considerably more than static shelving, which is why it is the common answer when a city or county cannot add square footage.

It suits government records particularly well when:

• most of the series are retrieved occasionally rather than all day by several people at once;
• private, controlled or protected series need to be kept together behind lockable carriages; and
• the room will absorb years of growth before disposal and transfers catch up.

Static shelving still makes sense for a busy counter-side file wall, and a mix is common: static shelving along one wall for active files, mobile carriages for the retention backlog.

For the drive choice, see manual, mechanical-assist and powered mobile shelving; for keyed and controlled-access options in general terms, see mobile shelving security and access control.

What each office typically stores

The departments inside a Utah city or county generate very different records, and they rarely all fit on the same shelf. Plan zones by format rather than by department name:

Utah’s public colleges and universities work from a separate Colleges and Universities retention schedule, with permanent student academic records and FERPA-protected files. Our guide to mobile shelving for Utah college and university records rooms covers how that changes the layout.

Oversized items are the ones that most often get forgotten. Bound record books, plats and plan sets do not fit a records box, so give them their own shelf depth or a dedicated flat or rolled storage zone. Our plan, map and drawing storage guide covers that format.

Election material is another special case: ballots, precinct supplies and equipment need a secure home between elections without taking over the whole room. We supplied mobile shelving for exactly that purpose to a city election office in North Ogden.

Other Utah public-sector records rooms we have fitted out include a county assessor’s office in Parowan, a county administration building in Heber City that expanded an existing system, and a state agency records room in Salt Lake City.

Building checks that matter in Utah

How a Utah records-room project gets specified

On purchasing: public entities often ask whether a cooperative contract applies. Contract numbers and terms change, so confirm the current contract and its scope with the Utah Division of Purchasing or your own purchasing officer before relying on it. For federal and cooperative routes in general, see GSA and cooperative contract purchasing. For the documents an architect or facilities team usually needs, see the specification and submittal checklist.

A records-room drawing is also a planning tool on its own. Many offices use it to show their council or commission how much the existing room will hold after a backlog clean-up, and how much longer that buys before another expansion is needed.

Frequently asked questions