OPRA request
Dear South Amboy School District,
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:
All emails FROM and TO [email address] with the subject matter "bond proposal" and "referendum" between January 1st, 2024 and December 31st, 2024
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,
Brandon Russell
908-413-6353
Good Morning,
There are 300 potentially responsive records to this request. We estimate
5 hours to review and possibly redact those (one email per minute, 300
emails = 5 hours). Due to the time involved, a special service charge will
be applied. The charge is $448.72, which is equal to five times the hourly
rate of the records custodian. If you accept this charge, please issue a
check made payable to the South Amboy Board of Education. Upon receipt of
the check, the records will be reviewed and provided when ready. If the
review takes more than the estimated time, we will inform you and notify
you of any additional charge. If the review takes less time than
estimated, you will be refunded the corresponding amount.
Dear Nicole Navarria,
Without an itemized list for the fees/charges, I must object to this "special service charge" as it is both unreasonable to charge "5x the hourly rate of the records custodian" and the emails I am asking for should include NO redactions.
The bond proposal/referendum has already been approved by the Board of Education and there is no active litigation concerning the subject at hand.
If you are not going to provide the public documents, please cite the full text from the new OPRA law that supports your assertation.
Yours sincerely,
Brandon Russell
908-413-6353
Mr. Russell,
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.
As the request is broad it seeks several hundred emails that may not be
limited to a single subject. Therefore, they must be reviewed prior to
being produced. The estimate of five hours to complete this task is based
on a small sampling and as previously informed the final amount may vary
after the review has been completed.
Kindly respond with your acceptance or rejection of the estimated charge.
We will not begin to process this request until we receive your written
acceptance.
Dear Nicole Navarria,
Before I make a decision, could you please answer the following:
1) What is the hourly rate of the custodian who would review the documents?
2) Approximately, how many pages are there in the 300 emails?
Yours sincerely,
Brandon Russell
Mr. Russell,
The hourly rate is $89.74, and the estimate is based on one minute per
email, not page.
Dear Nicole Navarria,
Can we cancel this request and I’ll submit a new one with a shorter timeframe after my other requests are completed?
Those are a higher priority, thank you!
Yours sincerely,
Brandon Russell
Dear Nicole Navarria,
I must update this request to reflect the following shortened timeline:
February 1st through March 31st, 2024. Same keywords and email address as before, thank you!
Yours sincerely,
Brandon Russell
