Lake Santeetlah – In the last 18 months, there have been 206 public records requests in town.
As part of a lengthy council meeting July 16, it was revealed that two residents – Tina Emerson and Jack Gross – were responsible for 81 and 125 requests, respectively.
“Many of these requests are convoluted, ambiguous, contain their opinion or are unclear about what is being requested,” council member Keith Predmore said. “This complicates the search efforts, expends limited resources and leads to confusion and wasted resources.”
Predmore then read an email from Gross submitted at 7:05 a.m. May 13. In it, Predmore noted 11 numbered items. The first was a statement – not a request – while only four of the remaining 10 were clear, concise requests.
“Please identify where a zoning certificate of compliance and the specific authority to require and collect any fee to obtain a zoning certificate of compliance within the original zoning that has been identified as what the town is operating under at this date and time,” the third numbered item in the email reads.
“Also please identify the planning board members in place at the time and date that the entire process of adopting that zoning to include the date and time of the required public hearings and a record of the vote of the council members adopting that voting.”
“I’ll let you decipher it,” Predmore continued. “Let me be very clear: all have every right to request and receive any public record. Every American has a right to free speech.
“However, to abuse that right – by berating, abusing and threatening public service staff – is not only abuse of that right, but personal abuse as well. We need to be clear, concise and courteous in our public discourse.”
Council member Roger Carlton echoed Predmore’s sentiments, adding that a fee should be coupled into the process.
“If major research is done, we need to start charging – under state statute – what we can get,” Carlton said. “I want to take what Keith said, but expand it out. Make sure we don’t just talk about this – or say we don’t like it – but that we do something about it.”
Emerson suggested that high school students could come in and electronically archive all of the town’s documents, allowing quicker access to requests.
“They need volunteer time,” Emerson said. “Let them come in for an hour a day, give them a file and let them start downloading. I think that would alleviate a lot of time that Emily (Hooper, town clerk) and Kim (Matheson, town administrator) are spending looking for old documents, especially ones Jack (Gross) and I have requested.”
Mayor Jim Hager later agreed to work with Hooper, Matheson and the town’s legal counsel on setting a fee schedule, which will be presented at the August council meeting.
Other news and notes from the meeting include:
* Regarding the installation of the town’s new security cameras and the front entrance upgrades, Hager indicated that four different contractors have expressed interest in bidding on the front-entrance job, while the town has installed two poles with security cameras.
One faces the exit gate, while the other three face Thunderbird Mountain Road, Santeetlah Trail and Thunderbird Trail. The cameras are not fully operational yet but will be once Zito Media installs Wi-Fi at the guardhouse, which was scheduled to take place this week.
* Past-due property taxes have had a 99 percent collection rate, but the town is looking to shore up the remaining 1 percent. Carlton proposed an “acceleration” of collection efforts, by both writing off the smaller, past-due amounts and identifying residents that have not paid and contacting them directly.
Graham County collects the town’s property taxes. Hager said he would contact County Manager Becky Garland about how to proceed, then update the council at the next meeting with the proposals.
* The next step in the town’s kudzu eradication plan is identification of the affected sites. Carlton summarized a resolution that a special committee – which includes Carlton and Stephanie Danforth – put together about the town’s plan to slow down and hopefully manage the kudzu issue. The resolution was adopted 4-1.