Waconia is a growing community of 9,200 people. It is located just 30 minutes west of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in an area popular with visitors for the many lakes, parks and enjoyable destinations within easy driving distance. The city is nestled next to scenic Lake Waconia and offers residents a healthy environment, as well as growing economic development, strong schools and excellent health care facilities.

 

The city continued to grow, as well as their document retention needs. They had very little extra space in their city hall and needed to add and retrieve vital documents on a daily basis. A new city hall was in the future, but they needed more space before it could be completed. So they made the decision to use document imaging to offset their need for additional space and to improve the productivity of their city employees.

 

Waconia purchased a nine user Laserfiche system from Larry Phelps of Solbrekk. The software was installed on their existing server. The documents were scanned in using a Bell and Howell FB1500 scanner.

 

The city had planned to move their office and all their equipment to the new city hall that was being built. Instead of moving all the file cabinets and boxes of documents, they decided they would scan as many documents as possible before the move. So the goal was not to move any file cabinets into the new building. Two high school students were hired for the summer, supervised by Mary Johnson, the city clerk. By the end of the summer, the students had successfully moved most of the permanent documents from paper to images in Laserfiche.

 

Mary Johnson stated, “When the time came to move, all the file cabinets were empty and were not moved to the new building.”