Stafford County has debuted its new Public Records Online Portal on the Stafford website. The portal allows users to access minutes, proclamations, resolutions and conditional use permits. Minutes are available back to 1870—as this is an ongoing effort by the County to increase transparency and streamline resident efforts to find information. Stafford partnered with a company to use OnBase. This specialized software product allows for the scanning and storage of County documents and documents by County staff and the public.
“Our goal is to give people access to the Board’s decisions as well as the discussion and background work that went into them,” said Randy Vosburg, County Administrator. “It was not easy going fully digital with these records, as we had to scan dozens of years of historic books of both typed and handwritten records. It is worth it to make the records more accessible to the public.”
Users may search by proclamation or resolution numbers, the year of the activity, titles, dates and keywords. To search by keyword or “wild card,” simply put an asterisk before and after a search word. Individual resolutions and proclamations are available back to 1988. Before that time, resolutions and proclamations were included in the body of the minutes. The older documents are written by hand.
The search function allows you to make a selection via a drop-down box. The search fields do not have to be filled out to complete a search. For instance, if you only know the year you are looking for, you can just input that year, and all the resolutions, ordinances, or proclamations from that year will pop up. Again, for anything older than 1988, you will have to look through minutes for details.
To use the Public Records Online Portal, please visit www.pob.staffordcountyva.gov/publicaccess. If you have questions about using the system, please call the Board of Supervisors Clerk’s Office at (540) 658-8607.