Macon Magazine

96 maconmagazine.com | August/September 2026 "Helping citizens understand government and being as transparent as we can is important. People sometimes have suspicions about what goes on at City Hall. That's one of the reasons I wanted to put everything online." being preserved in another. Walking into the Archives and Records Center feels like stepping into a city's memory. There are tons of shelves containing decades of history from marriage licenses, payroll records, and retirement files to criminal evidence and documents that help families trace generations of their ancestry. Every box is labeled purposefully, and every document matters. The manager of the Archives and Records Center, Kitty Cosper, knows those shelves almost by heart. Protective of the records under her care, she laughs about once threatening to barricade the doors after realizing unauthorized people could access "her" archives. "These records aren't open to the public," Cosper said. "If something goes missing in here, I have to answer for it. They're our responsibility." new document management system, contracts, ordinances, resolutions and deeds are now available online, a process which gives citizens easier access to public records. "One of my goals was to be transparent," Ross said. "I think by doing that, we've achieved the transparency that we wanted." That commitment to transparency is only one part of the office's responsibilities. The clerk's office also manages approximately 2,500 open records requests each year, a mammoth task when each is governed by strict legal deadlines. "We have a three-day limit to acknowledge or respond," Ross said. "I look at every open records request every Monday and Friday. It's very time- consuming, but it's very important." While Ross oversees government operations in one building, another kind of history is carefully

• Cover