In regards to the $150.00 charge made by David Lang one can only wonder at what he is doing?
As Mr. Lang had been dragging his feet in replying to my request for documents and after many months then dropping 4 huge binders in front of me it seemed prudent to, in detail, identify what documents were being requested. In looking over the binders it was apparent that most of the documents originated from computer. Therefore it was simple enough to just request "all" the documents for items that came from a computer. I sent Mr. Lang a letter requesting the computer documents be made available in electronic form.
See letter of request by clicking here. One might look at the list and think that is quite a few items but with a computer it isn't. You see documents are kept in folders. Any good secretary would have all of the documents for a year in a single folder. All one has to do is click on the folder and copy it. Then you paste the copy into the flashdrive. Simple. Takes a few seconds. Why the $150.00 charge?
Mr. Lang has replied to my request with a most amazing letter. In the first place I would like to mention that when Mr. Lang first told me that he would have to make the documents PDF I brought it before the council.
(Click here and read about it here in the second from the bottom post.) That would be a time consuming process and totally unnecessary. The council stated that they would look into it and get back to me. The following Friday after the City Council meeting Mr. Lang informed me that they will not have to make the files PDF after all.
Now we read in the letter from Mr. Lang that they made PDF files anyway.
Click here for the letter from Mr. Lang.A comparison of the letter I sent Mr. Lang and his reply is enlightening. In the first place I asked for three things. Item 1 has been taken care of. Item two was a request for "
copies" of 98 documents to be found in the 4 EDA binders. I did not ask for PDF files. I had requested those documents to be copies because many of them were obviously
not in the city computers or contained hand notes. The third thing I asked for was electronic copies of documents that came from a city computer. These documents were not typed up on some typewriter. They were from a computer and therefore should still be in the computer. How does Mr. Lang reply to such simple requests?
According to his letter Item 2:
- Mr. Lang wrote:
- "A total of 146 pages were tagged by you. This includes the pages listed on the two sheets of paper attached you your letter. Electronic copies in PDF format of all tagged pages have been place onto your 4MB flash drive."
Did I ask for electronic copies of those documents? NO! Mr. Lang goes ahead and makes them anyway. I had attached two sheets of paper identifying the tagged pages. Mr. Lang only returned to me one page.
Click here to see the page. As you can see by looking at the link each page was numbered. It was not difficult to open the book and see the first item being requested and go to the first tag. I counted the pages and the tags to match the list. For Mr. Lang to state that there were 146 pages flies in the face of logic. Common sense dictates that if someone requests documents and they give you an itemized detail of the documents then that is what you copy. If Mr. Lang had a question about some other pages why didn't he email me or call me? It is puzzling that Mr. Lang states that there were 146 pages tagged. If that is true then why did he send me 179 pages of documents? That count doesn't include the meetings and agendas that were requested electronically. Add to that the fact that there are duplicates, blank pages and documents that were requested and tagged and not sent.
For instance a request was made for the duties of the EDA secretary. It was four pages. If you look on the itemized request above item number 46-47-48-49 was for the EDA secretary duties. Mr. Lang has sent me only two pages
Click here for page 1. To see page 2
click here. Looking at page one of the EDA Secretary duties on the bottom of the page is a little blue tag. On the tag is written "P. 1-4" That is my notation that there are four pages in a row to be copied. Yet Mr. Lang only gave me a second page. Where are the other two pages?