On August 16, 2011, City Council adopted Resolution No. 2011-05 which established a public records policy and fee schedule. As Council is aware, the City will be launching a new public portal through JustFOIA for residents to submit their public records requests on April 15, 2024. As staff was working with the representatives of JustFOIA, it was brought to their attention that some of the provisions and fees set forth in the current resolution needed to be revised as they were outdated.
A summary of the proposed changes are as follows:
- Section I - Definitions - "Public Records" definition has been revised to correspond with Florida Statutes and "Reasonable Time" definition has been revised to provide for ten working days instead of three as some requests are more voluminous than others.
- Section II - Basic Fee Schedule - references to CD's have been removed and replaced with "electronic media storage device" as technology has evolved since 2011 and will continue to evolve moving forward in the future.
- Section IV - Deposit has been revised to reflect that a minimum deposit of fifty percent (50%) of the total estimated charge shall be required in advance, prior to the city initiating the work to comply with the request. It should be noted that the change in the deposit amount corresponds with the internal policy currently being used by the Police Department for records requests. This change will mainstream records requests across all city departments.
- Section V - Payment has been revised to include debit card and credit card options for payment. Payment via personal check has been removed to avoid the City incurring any fees due to checks that would be returned from the requestor for insufficient funds.
All of the remaining provisions and fees set forth in the original resolution remain unchanged and in full effect. A copy of Resolution No. 2011-05 has been attached to this agenda item for reference.