112 N Taylor Avenue
Dear Neptune Township,
Please accept this electronic request for public records made under OPRA and the common law right of access. I am not required to fill out an official form or use a particular software platform to submit my request per NJSA 47:1A-6(f), which states that an email from a requestor including all of the information required on the adopted form shall suffice in place of a completed form as a valid government record request.
I HAVE NOT been convicted of any indictable offense under the laws of New Jersey, any other state, or the United States.
I WILL NOT use the requested government records for a commercial purpose.
I AM NOT seeking records in connection with a legal proceeding.
Records requested: oil tank removal and or any permits pertaining to the residence of 112 N Taylor Avenue
My preferred delivery method for response(s) to this request is by E-mail as attachments. Please confirm you have received this request. If you are not the custodian of records, please forward my request to that person and provide their email address to me for future reference.
Yours faithfully,
H. DeMuro
Good morning,
You request went to our spam folder so we are just seeing it now.
OPRA allows you to request "identifiable records" As such request must
specify the records requested, not just the types of records you're
seeking. It is not the roll or responsibility of the Records Custodian to
research a property to determine what records exist that fit the criteria
you provided, in this case : : oil tank removal and or any permits. The
township also does not have top search through all of its files looking
for documents and records that may be responsive.
The courts have ruled:
In other words, a records custodian is not required "to conduct research
among its records… and correlate data from various government records in
the custodian's possession." Id. at 546-47, 868 A.2d 1067. (internal
citation omitted). To qualify under OPRA then, the request must reasonably
identify a record and not generally data, information or statistics.
Nor does OPRA "authorize a party to make a blanket request for every
document" a public agency has on file. See Gannett, supra, 379 N.J.Super.
at213, 877 A.2d 330 . Rather, a party requesting access to a public record
under OPRA must specifically describe the document sought. Ibid.; see also
MAG Entm't, supra, 375 N.J.Super. at 546-49, 868 A.2d 1067 .
I assume you are looking for building permits, you need to clarify the
permit you are requesting by providing the type of permit, the work
permitted and when it was issued. For example: The plumbing permit for the
new addition in 2020. Same for oil tank removal, we need to know
approximately when the permit was issued.
Alternatively, you can request a permit history report which is an
identifiable record that will list the permits issued since these
functions were computerized. Will that suffice?
Please note, for underground storage tanks, the existence of permit should
not be relied upon to definitely determine if there are or are not any
tanks on the property or that tanks were not installed or removed without
a permit or before permits were required. Permits only indicate that at
the time the work was done it met the minimum code requirements in effect
at that time. The code may have changed since the work was completed or
the work may have been altered to make it out of compliance since we
inspected and closed the permit.
Dear William Bray,
I would like to request a permit history report
Yours sincerely,
H. DeMuro
