Election Office Storage Mobile Shelving Case Study: North Ogden, Utah
How a Utah city consolidated ballots, voting equipment, precinct supplies, and election records into one secure, space-efficient mobile shelving system inside its existing city offices.
Customer
North Ogden City, Utah
Location
North Ogden, Weber County, Utah
Product
Mobile shelving system
Application
Election office storage
About the project
This project supplied a mobile shelving system for the election office storage area inside North Ogden City’s municipal offices. Between elections, a city clerk’s office has to hold ballots, voting equipment, precinct supplies, and election records securely and in order, without dedicating a permanently oversized room to material that only sees heavy activity a few weeks a year.
Material Handling USA supplied a mobile shelving system purchased through a Utah state cooperative contract, sized to the city’s storage room and closed in July 2023.
The situation
Election offices juggle a wide mix of material on a strict calendar. Ballots and other election records have to be kept secure and organized to meet state retention requirements. Voting equipment and precinct supply kits sit idle most of the year, then have to come out fast and complete in the run-up to an election.
Static shelving forces a trade-off in a room like this: enough fixed aisles to reach everything, or enough shelving to hold everything, but rarely both once the shelving and the room are the same size the room has always been. City buildings are not getting bigger, and election material does not get lighter with every election cycle.
North Ogden City needed its election office storage room to hold more, stay organized enough to locate any precinct’s supplies quickly, and do it inside a fixed municipal building footprint.
What Material Handling USA supplied
We supplied a mobile shelving system for the city’s election office storage room, purchased through a Utah state cooperative contract and laid out to the room’s footprint.
See a similar approach on our state agency records storage case study, and on purchasing through a cooperative contract on buying mobile shelving on GSA and cooperative contracts.
Why election storage suits mobile shelving
An election office’s storage problem is really a scheduling problem. For most of the year the room holds voting equipment and precinct kits that no one needs to touch. In the weeks before an election, staff need to pull every precinct’s supplies quickly, check them against a list, and get them back out the door on time.
Mobile shelving fits that pattern well. Consolidating a room’s worth of fixed aisles into one moving aisle converts most of that unused walkway into shelving, so the same room holds more precinct kits, more equipment, and more years of retained election records without expanding the building.
It also keeps that material organized rather than stacked. A defined shelf and range for each precinct’s kit, and a separate zone for retained ballots and records, makes the pre-election pull and the post-election put-away both faster and less error-prone.
Benefits the city gained
More election storage in the same room. Collapsing fixed aisles into one moving aisle turned walkway floor into usable shelving for ballots, equipment, and supplies.
Organized, zoned storage. Ballots, voting equipment, and precinct kits each have a defined location instead of a mixed stack, which speeds up the pre-election pull.
Support for records retention. A fixed, orderly shelving layout supports the consistent record-keeping that election material calls for.
No added building footprint. The gain came from the existing storage room, not from new construction, which matters for a municipal budget.
Room to keep up with growth. Election equipment and the volume of retained records both tend to grow election over election; the system can be reshelved as that happens.
How the project ran
The sequence on this project is the one we run on most municipal office storage projects.
Election and municipal storage across Utah
Material Handling USA is based in Salt Lake City and has supplied mobile shelving to city and county offices throughout Utah, including North Ogden City in Weber County. Utah cities and counties can typically purchase mobile shelving through a state cooperative contract, which is how this system was bought.
Election offices are one of several municipal storage problems that mobile shelving solves well; we’ve also supplied city clerk record rooms, permit and planning file rooms, and evidence storage for Utah public-safety departments.
See our state agency records storage case study, or mobile shelving cost and budget drivers for planning a municipal project.
Call (801) 328-8788 to plan election or municipal office storage for a Utah city or county.
Frequently asked questions
What does an election office typically store in mobile shelving?
Can a city buy mobile shelving on a state contract?
How much extra storage does mobile shelving add to an existing room?
Does mobile shelving help with election record retention requirements?
Does election office mobile shelving need to be motorized?
What other municipal departments use mobile shelving?
How long does a municipal mobile shelving project take?
Planning election office or municipal storage?
Send us your storage room footprint and what you need to organize, and we will lay out a mobile shelving system that fits the room and your election calendar. Utah state contract purchasing available.