Public Records

[dhyatt]

The Town of Cary is set to ask the their subscriber based email list be exempt from NC's Public Records laws which currently make it available to any entity that asks - no questions asked. It seems the law as it stands would allow someone to walk into Town Hall, ask for a public record, and never even have to provide their name. So what do CP readers think about this? Are totally anonymous requests for public records OK? When is it OK to be anonymous and when is it not?

[SusanA]

In general, I support the public records law that make all e-mail about town business to and from elected and appointed town officials, as well as town employees, public records.

There are exemptions. Naturally, certain matters, such as medical information, must be kept private. I think that e-mail addresses of subscribers to town news e-mails should also be exempt from the law and kept private.



The Town of Cary is set to ask the their subscriber based email list be exempt from NC's Public Records laws which currently make it available to any entity that asks - no questions asked. It seems the law as it stands would allow someone to walk into Town Hall, ask for a public record, and never even have to provide their name. So what do CP readers think about this? Are totally anonymous requests for public records OK? When is it OK to be anonymous and when is it not?

[Icorpse]

It depends on what is being asked for. I agree with Susan in that certain matters should be private, even for elected officials.

[Don]

Cary is only requesting that the town's listserv database (10,000+ email addresses of citizens who have signed up to receive email updates from the town) not be classified as a public record.

Actual emails and other communiciation to and from the town will always remain public record.

[rlk]

Cary is only requesting that the town's listserv database (10,000+ email addresses of citizens who have signed up to receive email updates from the town) not be classified as a public record.

Actual emails and other communiciation to and from the town will always remain public record.

Don I agree that communications to and from the town, and documents generated by the town or it's consultants should be public record. However, in the case of Cary and the WWP forcing their sewage plant into New Hill, Cary has not provided the records we have requested. We have made 2 requests for the minutes of one meeting, and have yet to receive the minutes. We have received a lot of useless data, but not the minutes of the meeting we requested.

Cary puts on a good show by saying their records are available and open to the public, however, Cary's actions are far different than their words.

Bob

[d4vendel]

Cary is only requesting that the town's listserv database (10,000+ email addresses of citizens who have signed up to receive email updates from the town) not be classified as a public record.

Actual emails and other communiciation to and from the town will always remain public record.

Don I agree that communications to and from the town, and documents generated by the town or it's consultants should be public record. However, in the case of Cary and the WWP forcing their sewage plant into New Hill, Cary has not provided the records we have requested. We have made 2 requests for the minutes of one meeting, and have yet to receive the minutes. We have received a lot of useless data, but not the minutes of the meeting we requested.

Cary puts on a good show by saying their records are available and open to the public, however, Cary's actions are far different than their words.

Bob

Bob,

Which specific meeting minutes are you missing?

[rlk]

In order to answer your question, let me give you some background.

The towns of Cary, Apex, Morrisville, and Holly Springs formed the Western Wake Partners (WWP) to implement a regional sewage plant. Cary was/is the lead partner.

The WWP employed engineering consulting firms to determine sites within the Southwestern part of Wake County that were suitable to host a sewage plant.

The consultants developed a list of 29 potential sites. They then narrowed the 29 sites to 12, and ranked the 12 sites from most favorable to least favorable.

Sometime in the later half of 2004, technical representatives from each of the 4 towns (Kim Fisher for Cary; Tim Donnelly for Apex; Blake Mills for Morrisville; and Stephanie Sudano for Hilly Springs) met to chose the preferred site to take to NC DENR.

During this meeting, the 4 individuals mentioned above ignored the input of the consulting engineers (who had already ranked the 12 sites) and skipped over the 3 top ranked sites to chose Site 14 which was ranked 4th; then skipped over sites ranked 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th to pick the 9th ranked site which is located in Chatham County; then skipped over the rest of the top 12 sites and picked a site that was not even in the top 12, Site 8. These 3 sites were then taken to NC DENR as the top 3 preferred sites.

Now to answer your question:

Because we can not understand how anyone could logically go against the advice of their consulting engineers and skip over the 3 top ranked sites; then skip the 5th through 8th ranked sites; then skip the rest of the top 12 sites to pick a site that was never ranked; we requested the minutes of the meeting where these individuals made this decision. In our request, we requested handwritten notes, electronic minutes, and/or printed/typed minutes.

We have received a lot of data from Cary, but have never been given the minutes to this meeting. Our last request was December 2009.

Bob

[d4vendel]

Thanks, Bob. I am very familiar with the New Hill history and the process to date.

I am unsure as to if the Town of Cary was responsible for producing the minutes of the meeting you referred to as it was not a Town of Cary meeting. I agree that whoever organized the meeting should have designated someone to be responsible for taking minutes and producing them after the meeting, but I am not sure who that party was supposed to be. It sounds like the Town may have turned over everything they have from that meeting to you, but that is just a guess on my part.

Town staff cannot be held responsible for not providing something that they do not have.

[NHCA]

Cary is only requesting that the town's listserv database (10,000+ email addresses of citizens who have signed up to receive email updates from the town) not be classified as a public record.

Actual emails and other communiciation to and from the town will always remain public record.

Don I agree that communications to and from the town, and documents generated by the town or it's consultants should be public record. However, in the case of Cary and the WWP forcing their sewage plant into New Hill, Cary has not provided the records we have requested. We have made 2 requests for the minutes of one meeting, and have yet to receive the minutes. We have received a lot of useless data, but not the minutes of the meeting we requested.

Cary puts on a good show by saying their records are available and open to the public, however, Cary's actions are far different than their words.

Bob

The meeting was called by Kim Fisher, at that time Cary's Public Works director. One would think that if you are going to make a decision to ignore the advice of your engineering consultants or destroy a community located outside of any of the partner towns jurisdication that you would keep accurate minutes of the meeting, but, then on the other hand, maybe you don't want this made public. Guess we'll never know since no minutes have been provided to New Hill.

Paul Barth, President NHCA

[johnb]

Town staff cannot be held responsible for not providing something that they do not have.



But they should be held responsible when they act to deliberately avoid creating or maintaining that paper trail.