Thank you for reaching out to the Township of Livingston Clerk's Department, you should receive a response shortly. For immediate inquiries, please call (973) 992-5000, #5404 .

Dear LTown United,

This comes in response to your request for public records made under OPRA
and the common law right of access for:
"Records requested:

On June 17, 2021 the following OPRA was submitted electronically to this
office requesting: “ All emails over the last 2 years containing the words
"weed", "marijuana" and/or "cannabis" to/from Mayor Klein, Councilman
Vieira, Councilman Anthony, Councilman Fernandez, Councilman
Meinhardt, Town Manager Lewis, Deputy Manager Jones Jr., Town Attorney
Kantor and Town CFO Cucci.  Please provide all requested information in
PDF format.”

Please provide all relative Township emails that were subsequently
generated as a result of this very specific OPRA request. "

You were advised on July 7, 2021 by Carolyn Mazzucco, the message below
and we have never received any clarifications back from you until you
submitted the same request on Sunday, April 24, 2022 which is considered
to be received on the next business day, Monday, April 25, 2022.  

The IT Manager, has performed a search of the Township emails and
determined there are 3,693 emails that will have to be printed, reviewed,
redacted and scanned into PDF format.  The Township does not have access
to emails to or from Town Attorney Kantor, unless they were sent or
received by Township personnel.

Due to the voluminous number and size of many of the responsive records,
an extraordinary extension of time and effort will be required.  If you
could please consider narrowing your request, the responsive emails could
be produced in a more timely manner.  Also, a special service charge
pursuant to N.J.S.A. 47:1A-5.c, due to limitations of staff able to do
this task, and hours required, will also need to be assessed and provided
in advance for your prior approval.

OPRA allows public agencies to impose special service charges whenever the
nature, format, manner of collation, or volume of a government record
embodied in the form of printed matter to be inspected, examined, or
copied pursuant to this section is such that the record cannot be
reproduced by ordinary document copying equipment in ordinary business
size or when fulfilling a request requires an extraordinary expenditure of
time and effort. See N.J.S.A. 47:1A-5.c.  Special service charges must be
based upon the actual direct cost of providing the copy or copies.

OPRA mandates that the requestor shall have the opportunity to review and
object to the charge prior to it being incurred.  See N.J.S.A. 47:1A-5.c.
As such, a detailed estimate is provided below:

Steven Wachtel has spent 1 hour at a direct hourly rate of $56.59 to
provide the emails responsive to the Township Clerk's Office.  Renee Resky
at a direct hourly rate of $29.30 has spent 1 hour extracting the 8 files
to determine the number of emails responsive to this request.

Name  # of emails
Ann Cucci 48
Al Anthony 495
Barry Lewis 955
Ed Meinhardt 522
Michael Vieira 275
Rudy Fernandez 323
Russ Jones 540
Shawn Klein 535
Total Emails 3693

Due to the extraordinary extent of time and effort for printing and
redactions, including the cost of printing at $.05 per page, a special
service charge will need to be assessed.  The exact cost is not known at
this time, but we under-estimate that a minimum of 10,000 pages will be
printed, at a cost of $500, plus an hourly rate of $25.27 (the lowest
level employee capable of fulfilling the request), dedicated to printing,
reviewing for redaction, reprinting and scanning.   Due to office staff
shortages of 2 full-time and one part-time staff and the amount of OPRA
requests received daily, we are able to commit one-half hour per day for
this request, which we estimate will take six more months to complete. 
There are 127 working days from May 2 through October 31, and if one-half
hour each day is dedicated to this OPRA response, we estimate the cost of
a dedicated professional to be $1604.65 (127 days X 1/2 hour per day X
$25.27).   Many hours have already been spent on aggregating and
collecting the emails, unzipping the files and downloading them into a
readable file, as mentioned in the July 2 email.

If you would like us to proceed with this work, please submit payment by
cash or check to the Township of Livingston for $2,190.54 ($1604.65+
$56.59+$29.30+$500) to the Clerk's Department, made payable to the
Township of Livingston.

Kindly respond in writing with your acceptance or rejection of this
estimated charge.  We will not begin to process this request until we
receive your written acceptance.  
Livingston Township Clerk's Office
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