Ronan to charge more for public records
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RONAN – An increase in requests for public records over the past two months prompted the Ronan City Council to vote at its Nov. 4 meeting to draft a policy that will charge more for retrieval and copies of public documents.
“We’ve had a policy of (charging) 15 cents per page, but what happens is that that covers the toner, and the paper, and the ink and the machine and stuff, but that doesn’t cover the time of going into the back room and digging 800 years back or whatever it is,” Mayor Kim Aipperspach said. There have been more records requests in the past two months than in the past 10 years, Aipperspach said.
Aipperspach said the rate should be 15 cents per page, plus the $35 per hour labor cost for the City Clerk Kaylene Melton and $100 per hour fee for attorney Jessica Cole-Hodgkinson if legal review is required. The cost could be higher if the records are more than three years old and another person needs to be hired, he said.
Cole-Hodgkinson recommended that the city establish rates and a policy for turnaround time on document requests and specify an additional fee for “rush jobs.”
“You can charge reasonable fees,” Cole-Hodgkinson said. “What ‘reasonable’ is? It varies.”
Aipperspach said since the city was only passing on the city’s cost, prices like the $100 attorney fee should be considered reasonable.
“You have a reason for it,” Cole-Hodgkinson said. “That doesn’t necessarily make it reasonable.”
In other business:
• Policeman Mark Fiorentino said officers still cannot communicate with dispatch on their radios.
“I looked and in a three-day period he called dispatch 100 times,” Fiorentino’s wife Dyan told councilmembers.
Dyan Fiorentino said the council needs to find a solution before a criminal catches an officer at a time when they are unable to communicate with dispatch.
“They are going to shoot him, my husband, and I’m going to sue the hell out of everyone,” Fiorentino said. “ … My husband’s life is worth more than a radio that doesn’t work.”
• Jennifer Cote was re-hired as the city’s auditor.
• Cole-Hodgkinson gave council members a draft of the city’s new vicious dog ordinance. The new ordinance is what Cole-Hodgkinson called “dog-friendly,” and gives dogs second chances.
Under the new ordinance violations will carry a minimum fine of $50-$1,000. A vicious dog is defined as a dog that when unprovoked acts in an aggressive manner, inflicts severe injury on or kills a human being or animal or a dog that has on two separate occasions killed, seriously bitten or inflicted injury or otherwise caused injury on a domestic animal in a three year time span.
There were some questions about whether or not the city had a place to keep impounded dogs, and if the city had funds to do that. Those questions were unanswered and the council did not take action on the policy.
“This is nowhere near a first reading,” Cole-Hodgkinson said. “I don’t think we’ll be ready for first reading until after your guys have discussed the matter with the tribe.”
The council wants to try to create uniform policies and punishments for tribal and non-tribal law enforcement to use when handling vicious dogs.
• Chief of Police Valent Maxwell deferred discussion about hiring for his department to executive session. Later in the week, Aipperspach said the town intends to hire a fifth full-time police officer.
