Longboat Key plans for document-shredding event

The town of Longboat Key is set to host a free shredding event next month.

From 9 a.m. to noon on March 18, ShredQuick will have a truck outside of Town Hall for people to discard outdated paper records and materials.

“It’s just basically a service we provide to our residents, and then also it helps us get rid of documents that we have on file that we have gone through, digitized or if they’ve hit the retention dates, we can destroy,” said Deputy City Clerk Savannah Cobb.

At the event, people can shred invoices, bank statements, Medicare statements, address labels, junk mail, paycheck stubs, tax documents, credit reports, returned checks, voided checks, legal documents, medical records, dental records, travel documents, used airline tickets, investment documents, any documents with a social security number showing, employment records, credit cards, receipts and expired passports.

The town will not accept the following items at the event: CDs, DVDs, flash drives, hard drives, VCR tapes, batteries and cellphones.

Cobb said the town typically holds a shredding event twice a year, including one in the spring at its community open house. The COVID-19 pandemic prevents the town from holding its open house in March.

“We have a pretty good outcome whenever we hold this from the public, and we get a lot of good feedback from the public that they do enjoy this service,” Cobb said. “Also, we just have so many records that we have to destroy on our end that we kind do it for ourselves as well as the public.”

The town will abide by its COVID-19 safety protocols for the March 18 shredding event. People are asked to wear a mask, and can choose to stay in their car while dropping off unwanted materials.