Solano Supervisors dissolve Historical Records Commission

FAIRFIELD – The Solano County Board of Supervisors voted to dissolve the county Historical Records Commission on Tuesday despite concerns over public access and preservation of the historical archive. 

County staff said that the archive will be preserved, but a large portion may be returned to Solano County Superior Court, where local historians fear they could be destroyed or lost without oversight from the commission.

The Board voted 4-1 to dissolve the commission. Supervisor Wanda Williams entered the sole opposing vote. Williams offered an alternative motion to keep the commission and utilize their expertise to maintain the records in the transition to a digital format, but the motion did not have support from the other supervisors.

Prior to the vote, professional archivist Leslie Batson, who is former chair of the historical records commission and an archive volunteer for over 11 years, urged the board to continue supporting efforts to make the archive accessible to the public. 

The historical records collection “consists of 791 containers in the form of boxes, book carts and map filing cabinets,” according to the staff report. The bulk of the documents are from the 1850s to the 1920s with smaller portions of the collection that range from the 1930s to 2010s. 

Batson said that over the years the archive has been used to research the early judicial system, the histories of ethnic communities in Solano County and the early presence of African Americans, first as slaves and then as registered voters after the Civil War. 

She said that government organizations like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have made use of the archive and citizens have used the records to support their case in property lawsuits.

In May, the board dissolved several other public advisory bodies, including the Agricultural Advisory Committee and the Solano Partnership Against Violence, after an ad-hoc committee found that the input of those commissions was no longer necessary. 

But the board stopped short of dissolving the Historical Records Commission because commission chair Elissa DeCaro cited recommendations from a 2017 study of the county’s records policies that called for improved public access to the archive. She said it had never been completed and key recommendations were ignored. 

At Tuesday’s meeting, several supervisors supported digitizing the documents to make them more publicly accessible. The archive is currently stored at a facility in Richmond and members of the public can only request documents by email. 

“I believe 100% that these records should be digitized,” Supervisor Erin Hannigan said. “They should be searchable, they should be downloadable, by anybody out there in the public who wants access to them.”

But the portion that may be digitized is still under consideration. Court documents make up  81% of the collection and this portion may be returned to the court. 

Hannigan said that her direction is to digitize the 19% that county departments are responsible for and return the rest to the court. “Let them decide what they want to do with it, whether they want to pay for storage or pay to have it digitized,” she said.

According to Batson, the court gifted these records to the Solano County Historical Commission in the first place and she fears that they do not have an interest in preserving the archive.

“The early court records are the most valuable part of the collection for extensive research,” Batson said. “Please reconsider returning the court records. The court does not want them, they will be destroyed.”

Supervisor Mitch Mashburn suggested a review of the court’s portion of the documents so the county could retain those that have historical significance and return the rest to the court. 

To address the report recommendations, the county plans to retain an archivist to determine which records qualify as a historical record and should be preserved as part of the archive. 

In response to the supervisor’s enthusiasm regarding digitization efforts, Batson said that some of the documents are bound or glued together, making them difficult and expensive to digitize. Even if the documents are accessible online it is still necessary to have reference systems in place so the documents can actually be found in the database.

The Solano County Historical Records Commission has long advocated for a permanent location for the records where they could be accessible to the public with the help of volunteers who are familiar with the archive.

Batson said that there is no substitute for a knowledgeable archivist that is intimately acquainted with a collection, who, when presented with a question from a researcher can say “I know records that might give us the answer.”

Friends of the Solano County Archive has issued an update to their petition calling for the reinstatement of the Solano County Records Commission, which had been signed by 711 people as of Wednesday.