REVISED Capital Expenditures on 255 Wheat Road
Dear Buena Borough Fire District #2,
This is a request for public records made under OPRA and the common law right of access. I am not required to fill out an official form. Please acknowledge receipt of this message.
Records requested:
Please provide a list and total taxpayer funds spent by Commissioners of Fire District #2 on capital expenditures, maintenance expenses and all other expenses as approved at Commissioner meetings directly related to the Minotola Fire Company property located at 255 Wheat Road in Minotola (i.e. utilities, landscaping, repairs, maintenance, improvements, etc.) for the period 2010 through 2022. Please include cancelled checks, invoices and bid proposals.
Please also provide the source/proof of funding to construct the firehouse structure that houses fire apparatus at 255 Wheat Road. This information should include cancelled checks, invoices and bid proposals as evidence of funding used for the cost of the contruction of the building located on this property.
Yours faithfully,
Susan Romeo
Susan,
Thank you for your request. Due to this size of this request, in order to proceed, a Special Service Charge would be required as per the NJ Government Records Council allows. A payment of $5215.50 will be required to fulfill your request. The request for 13 years of documents will require each year to be manually searched, appropriate files pulled, copying and redactions of account numbers and sensitive bank information, scanning of all documents requested, then refiling all documents in proper order. It is estimated that this would take about 10 hours per year of records. Also, the building estimates, bids, mortgage documents, invoices, and checks written from when the building was built will be an additional 3 hours to prepare, scan and send. The breakdown of the costs is as follows:
13 years of Capital Expenditures, regular bills, maintenance/repairs bills, to include invoices, bids, and cancelled checks pertaining to the building/property at 255 Wheat Rd @ 10 hours per year at a rate of 37.50 per hour for our Administrative Assistant to complete, $4875.00. Photocopying of banks statements to show cancelled checks and payments for building/property related expenditures, would be approx. 50 pages per year at $0.20 per page, or $10.00 for each year, $130.00.
Approx. 100 pages of documents per year to be scanned @ $0.05 per page, $65.00.
Original documents pertaining to the bidding, building of, invoices, and mortgage documents for the building located at 255 Wheat Rd would be another 3 hours to prepare at 37.50 per hour, $111.00. Scanning of these documents of at least 150 pages @ $0.05 per page, $7.50.
A certified or cashier's check made payable to the "Borough of Buena Board of Fire Commissioners, District 2" would be required in order start fulfilling this request. Also, we estimate that this would take several weeks to complete this task, as this would have to completed in addition to our Administrative Assistants' regular duties. These terms of the timeframe maybe negotiated if you decide to proceed with your request.
Thank you,
Justin Lilla
Borough of Buena Fire Commissioner, Fire District 2