Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Officials split on archives post
FAYETTEVILLE — Officials disagree over how best to manage historical records archive and maintain public access to records dating to Washington County’s founding.
Sue Madison, justice of the peace for District 12, raised the issue at the Nov. 4 meeting of the Quorum Court’s County Services Committee.
Madison said Tony Wappel, the longtime county archivist, resigned Oct. 18 over disagreements about how to manage the archives. In a letter to Madison, Wappel said he was concerned by a proposal to move the archivist position from the County
Judge’s Office to the Circuit Clerk’s Office in the County Courthouse at 280 N. College Ave. while keeping the archives in the Historic County Courthouse at 4 S. College Ave.
Brian Lester, county attorney, said the volume of business at the archives didn’t justify keeping a fulltime employee at the location. Activity logs kept at the archives in October and November show from one to four visitors a day.
Lester said the initial plan was to transfer the
full-time position to the Circuit Clerk’s Office since most of the requests were for records from that office. Transferring the archivist to the Circuit Clerk’s Office would allow the archivist to handle records requests and other duties as needed, Lester said.
With Wappel’s resignation, Lester said, the position has been eliminated from the county judge’s budget and not transferred to the Circuit Clerk Office’s budget. The salary for the position was $57,399 according to the 2019 budget.
The archives are being managed by Patty Burnett, Quorum Court secretary, in addition to her other duties, Lester said.
Wappel said in his letter he suggested in February the archivist position become a part-time job, but argued against a transfer and moving.
“The idea floating about to move the archivist to the new courthouse makes no sense,” Wappel said. “The archivist and possible archivist/museum curator should be near the material he or she oversees.”
Madison said she’s concerned about continuing public access if the county moves the archivist to a different location from the records and also about ensuring the records are properly managed and preserved. Some information in the records is not public, including information on Social Security numbers and other information in court records, so an archivist has to redact information before records can be released.
“This is not just a lot of old, dusty records,” Madison said. “This is probably the most complete set of records of any county west of the Mississippi. The public needs to be able to access the publicly accessible portion of these records and they need to be preserved.”
Maylon Rice, president of the Washington County Historical Society, said the records are historically important documents and their care shouldn’t be determined by the volume of use.
“There may just be one or two calls a day,” Rice said. “The archives in Washington County appeal to people all across the state and the country. The county needs to find another archivist.”
There is no single county records archive in Benton County, with offices there managing their older records in different locations. The County Clerk keeps older records in the Rogers office under the care of a records manager. The Circuit Clerk keeps some older court records in storage in the basement of the court annex building in Bentonville.
The justices of the peace took no action on the archives at the County Services Committee meeting. Ann Harbison, justice of the peace for District 14, said she needs to see the 1990 ordinance establishing the county archives before they discuss the issue again.