20211006_Zoning-Info

Responses

Response 1

From: Lamontagne, Danica
Sent: Friday, October 8, 2021 3:49 PM
To: 'Alicia Lopez' <alicia.l@zoning-info.com>
Subject: RE: Public Records Request (Ref# 77091)

Good afternoon Alicia,

Thank you for your public records request dated October 6, 2021. Please consider this my formal acknowledgement of your request.

There are a few pieces of information I wanted to ensure that you were aware of before I leave the office for the holiday weekend:

The City provides the first hour of work associated with your records request at no charge. There is a fee of $15 per hour for each hour of work after that. I am still waiting to hear back from some staff members to be able to provide you an estimate of the amount of time needed to complete the records search; however, I do anticipate that there will be a fee associated with your request. 

Once we provide an estimate of fees, which I expect to be able to do next week, I will need to receive confirmation from you that you accept the fee. Once I receive that confirmation, I will instruct our staff to move forward with gathering the information that you requested. Staff will keep track of the actual time it takes to fulfill your request, and you will only be charged a fee for the actual hours. We will need to receive a check from you for the fee in order to release the information. 

Knowing that this request will require the efforts of multiple departments and that we are still several steps away from releasing information to you, I cannot guarantee that it will be fulfilled by your client’s requested date of October 16.

Additionally, Maine’s Freedom of Access Act does not require the City to generate any new documents or provide information in any format other than its original format. With that in mind, the document that you have attached requesting that we generate a Zoning Compliance Report does not fall under the Freedom of Access Act; however, you can contact our Director of Code Enforcement, Roby Fecteau, at roby.fecteau@biddefordmaine.org and he can assist you with this.

Thank you and enjoy the long weekend!

Danica Lamontagne

City of Biddeford

Communications Coordinator

danica.lamontagne@biddefordmaine.org

207-282-8423

Response 2

From: Lamontagne, Danica
Sent: Friday, October 15, 2021 3:39 PM
To: 'Alicia Lopez' <alicia.l@zoning-info.com>
Subject: FW: Public Records Request (Ref# 77091)

Hello Alicia,

I have worked with staff to come up with an estimate for the amount of time it will take to fulfill your request. Across the various departments involved, I have been provided an estimate of a total of 68 hours of work. This is mainly due to the fact that nearly all of the documents that our staff will have to search through exist only in a paper format.

Based on this estimate, I have calculated a fee of $990 to fulfill this request. If there is a specific document or piece of information that you are seeking, we would be happy to try to work with you to help you narrow your request in order to find only that information and limit your fees. Please let me know if you would like us to proceed with the request as originally submitted.

Best,

Danica Lamontagne

City of Biddeford

Communications Coordinator

danica.lamontagne@biddefordmaine.org

207-282-8423