APPEAL TO UTAH STATE RECORDS COMMITTEE
February 21, 2014
Utah State Records Committee
c/o Susan Mumford
346 South Rio Grande Street
Salt Lake City, Utah 84101
RE: Request by Cedar Hills Citizens for Responsible Government for State Records Committee Hearing, due to non-compliance by the City of Cedar Hills with State Code requiring that they allow “…the public’s right of access to information concerning the conduct of the public’s business;…”, and “inspect free of charge”, public email and other records.
Ms. Mumford,
Thank you for allowing Cedar Hills Citizens for Responsible Government the opportunity to officially request a Hearing before Utah State Records Committee at their next possible meeting.
We apologize in advance for the quality of this Appeal. We hastily drafted it after expending great amounts of time to attempting to negotiate and compromise with the city, so far that attempt has failed. Our third invitation yesterday through the State Records Ombudsman Rosemary Cundiff to meet City officials with her as a mediator has not yet met with a response, — nor did we received a response to our acceptance of a City Councilman’s Rob Crawley’s proposal that would help us avoid the need to submit this Appeal.
Therefore, we file this request for a Hearing, seeking your indulgence if we find the need to alter or append to this Appeal at a later date. Please be aware that despite this Appeal, we will continue to seek mediation through the Ombudsman hoping that the city will offer a legal option to avoid the Hearing, and tens of thousands spent by city in legal fees in order to collect $900. We thank you in advance.
Introduction:
Our December 9, 2013 GRAMA request was denied twice; December 20, 2013 and January 22, 2014, exhausting our Appeals to the City of Cedar Hills. Therefore we APPEAL to the Utah State Records Committee with a request for Hearing for the following reasons:
We, Cedar Hills Citizens for Responsible Government, believe the City of Cedar Hills improperly refused us our legal request to “inspect free of charge” in accordance with our Constitutional guaranteed, “…public’s right of access to information concerning the conduct of the public’s business;…”, and the State Code designed to “…promote the public’s right of easy and reasonable access to unrestricted public records;…”. The City did this by stating the need for an expensive “compilation” processes we did not request, in order to charge fees specifically designed to discourage our effort to review the public record, electronically copy portions or all, and share those finding with residents via our www.CedarHillsCitizens.org website.
Because the City is abusing their power and the legal process by unnecessarily altering the public records from the form as “maintained” by the City Recorder with “30-hours” of printing / “compiling” / photocopying records thus incurring fees of “at least” $900 — this Appeal is not the same as previously Heard by the Committee in 2012. Therefore, a Hearing before the Utah State Records Committee is hereby respectfully requested.
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For PDF of entire letter of APPEAL click… APPEAL to State Records Committee for Hearing