This may be the computer age, but Schuylkill County is still buried under piles of paperwork.

The paper records for all of the county’s departments have long been stored in a building at 224 Bull’s Head Road, Norwegian Township, and at one time, in the courthouse attic.

“We used to store them in the attic above courtroom No. 1. Thank God we noticed that the ceiling was starting to give because of the weight,” Commissioner Gary J. Hess said earlier.

Now, the county is buying a Pottsville building for $375,000.

All three commissioners - Gary J, Hess, George F. Halcovage Jr., and Chairman Barron L. Hetherington - without discussion voted in favor of buying the building at 306 Prospect Street, Pottsville.

The plan emerged at a public commissioners’ workshop meeting on June 21. County officials discussed it, but took no action.

The sale, said county engineer Lisa Mahall, is “contingent upon an appraiser of equal or higher value than the purchase price, and a clean phase one environmental assessment.”

A new storage space is needed, Hess said.

“Over a number of years we’ve been running out of space for storage. (Since 2014) we rented a facility, and right now that’s not conducive to the amount of stuff that we have,” he said.

The county has been paying $3,300 a month to rent the building, Mahall said.

She and County Administrator Gary R. Bender have been searching for another place.

“Among the issues is that the roof leaks,” she said.

The new building, she said, is in “great structural shape.”

It’s well suited to the county’s needs; it’s closer to the courthouse, and doesn’t need any renovation.

“We might want to make a few minor modifications,” Mahall said.

“This is not something that popped up out of the blue,” Hess said of the search. “It’s one of the projects we’ve been trying to look to do.”

He said the archives section of the courthouse annex is full to overflowing. The papers from the courthouse attic were moved to the rented storage building.

County Archives Director Colleen Ryan has been on the job for 33 years, watching the molehills of paper - dating to 1811, when the county was formed - grow into mountains.

“When we started here, there was just a little bit,” she said. “I thought it was never going to get full, but it did.”

Now, the 10,000 square feet of space is packed. Boxes are stacked in the office area and along the wall of the corridor leading from the door to the office area.

Her office has microfilmed an enormous amount, including court documents, wills, and deeds.

But microfilming became too expensive. Her office is now scanning papers to transition as much as possible to computerized records.

But the paper persists.

“Once things come to the end of their retention period, we try to get them out of here,” Ryan said.

But considering the sheer volume of documents the courthouse churns out, keeping the paper contained is an impossible task.

Hess is pleased with the purchase.

“This (purchase) gives us the opportunity to take away a lease. This would be our facility, And it’s huge. It will definitely fulfill the need for many, many years of storage.”

The building formerly housed the Pottsville Moving & Storage Co. According to online county records, it was built in 1925, with an addition built in 1987.