If you’ve ever browsed through a Town Council agenda and the vast array of corresponding documents that accompany them to inform the members of the Warren Town Council on each of those items, there might be a small part of you that ponders for a second, “Wow, that’s a lot of paper.”

Town Council member Keri Cronin, during the Council’s September meeting last Monday evening, took it one step forward, and actually did the math, based on one year of those hefty packets that she said she has kept for her own records.

“I’ve done some back of the napkin math of what it is we’re actually creating in paper waste,” she said. “One year of packets weighs about 27.6 pounds, which means that - and this does not include the budget books or all the comp plan prints and re-prints - we’re generating for the five council members, about 173 pounds of paper waste a year in these council packets.”

Cronin argued that the information included within the packets is already made available digitally on the Town’s municipal ClerksBase database (accessible at https://clerkshq.com/warren-ri), so it is redundant and wasteful to require printed packets of each supporting document — which sometimes includes items that are held month-to-month without resolution and require reprinting of sometimes hundreds of pages of supporting documents.

On top of the printing waste, the packets are hand-delivered to Council members by a member of the Warren Police Department.

“All of these packets require paper, ink, man hours or person hours in the Clerk’s office to print them and assemble them and put them into an envelope and have our police department deliver them to us personally,” she said. “I love it when an officer comes and we talk about my dog. It’s great, but it’s a luxury and I think it’s something we need to sort of dial back on.”

Cronin argued that items such as the monthly expenditure and revenue documents are already delivered exclusively in digital format.

“It’s like we’ve got it backwards,” she said. “I’m not suggesting that we have the revenue and expenditure reports printed out and delivered to us, I’m saying it should all go digital.”

Council member Brandt Heckert was in support of Cronin’s initiative, saying it would relieve the Town Clerk’s office from arduous responsibility of printing and assembling the packets. “I think there’s a lot of work involved in this and we can relieve them of that burden,” he said.

But the two other Council members, Vice President Steven Calenda and Joe DePasquale (Council President John Hanley was absent from the meeting), had conflicting views on the proposal.

“I think it’s a noble cause,” DePasquale said, before qualifying that statement. “I have not had good success when we went electronic years ago. We even had bought computers for all of us. Either the server wasn’t working, or the computer wasn’t working. The sad reality is that paper works. For those who are able to do it without, I think that’s great. Maybe I’m the old fool here. I rely on the paper.”

Calenda said that in some regards, he thought digital delivery of the documents made sense, but he also had a habit of having printed out documents to mark up with notes during meetings.

“When it comes to certain information, 100 percent I need paper, because that’s where I'll make my corrections, my little notes, and I can go back to it,” he said. “The agendas and small stuff, 100% I agree yes we can go paperless.”

Ultimately, since Calenda and Heckert were both opting to not run for re-election, meaning the makeup of the Town Council body will change following the election in November with two newly elected members, the board decided to hold off on making any final changes prior to that new board being able to take up the issue at a later time.

Town Solicitor Anthony DeSisto recommended sending the matter to the Town Clerk’s office for their input before proceeding with any formal decision, which was ultimately agreed upon by the board. However, Cronin did make one last push for her cause.

“We can do better, and we should do better,” she said. “I would appreciate if the Clerks Office would look into the amount of paper that we’re receiving and bring it back to the most critical, useful stuff, and then see what other communities are doing and see if there are options.”