Spending records for the fiscal year 2025
Dear Paterson Board of Education,
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-5(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 purchase orders, vendor invoices, payments, and contracts issued by the Board of Education for any single transaction or payment totaling 10000 dollars or more.
Please include the following details for each record:
Vendor name
Date of payment or purchase order
Description of goods or services provided
Total amount paid or obligated
Funding source if available
Time period requested: January 1st 2025 to end of 2025
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,
Rakib ahmed
Mr. Ahmed,
Attached are check register reports for the 2024–2025 and 2025–2026 school years reflecting payments over $10,000, which are responsive to your request for records reflecting payments for the period 1/1/2025-12/31/2025.
The District does not maintain a single report or record that captures all of the categories and data points outlined in your request. In particular, we do not maintain a record that aggregates purchase orders, invoices, payments, and contracts together, includes detailed line item descriptions or funding sources, or isolates transactions above a specific dollar threshold.
To identify records meeting your $10,000 threshold or to link together purchase orders, invoices, payments, and contracts for a given transaction would require us to pull data from multiple systems and make judgment calls about how records relate to one another. That goes beyond retrieving an existing record and instead becomes a process of analysis and compilation.
Similarly, your request for “all purchase orders, vendor invoices, payments, and contracts” is very broad and does not point to specific, identifiable records. Those types of documents exist in different formats and locations, and responding to the request as written would require the District to decide which records fall within each category and how they should be gathered. OPRA does not require the District to make those kinds of determinations or to assemble records to fit a request.
Under OPRA, we are required to provide records as they exist, but not to create new reports, compile data, or conduct research. See MAG Entertainment, LLC v. Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control, 375 N.J. Super. 534 (App. Div. 2005); Bent v. Township of Stafford Police Department, 381 N.J. Super. 30 (App. Div. 2005).
With that in mind, the attached reports reflect the records we maintain in the ordinary course that are responsive to your request. To the extent your request seeks additional information or a different format that would require compilation or creation of new records, that portion of the request is denied.
Sincerely,
Boris Zaydel
Records Custodian
Paterson Public Schools