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Office of the Secretary of the District &
Custodian of Records Northeast Ambulance & Fire Protection District 314-382-1501 |
GUIDELINES
FOR INSPECTION AND COPYING OF OPEN PUBLIC RECORDS
The
following are the guidelines for responses to request for public records under
the Missouri Sunshine Law, Chapter 610 RSMo.
A copy of your request must be reduced to writing by the party seeking
the public record and submitted to the Secretary of the District who serves as
custodian of records for the District.
The
following records are closed records to the public and shall not be produced,
pursuant to Section 610.021 RSMo.:
(1) Legal actions, causes of action or litigation involving a public governmental body and any confidential or privileged communications between a public governmental body or its representatives and its attorneys. However, any minutes, vote or settlement agreement relating to legal actions, causes of action or litigation involving a public governmental body or any agent or entity representing its interests or acting on its behalf or with its authority, including any insurance company acting on behalf of a public government body as its insured, shall be made public upon final disposition of the matter voted upon or upon the signing by the parties of the settlement agreement, unless, prior to final disposition, the settlement agreement is ordered closed by a court after a written finding that the adverse impact to a plaintiff or plaintiffs to the action clearly outweighs the public policy considerations of section 610.011, however, the amount of any moneys paid by, or on behalf of, the public governmental body shall be disclosed; provided, however, in matters involving the exercise of the power of eminent domain, the vote shall be announced or become public immediately following the action on the motion to authorize institution of such a legal action. Legal work product shall be considered a closed record;
(2) Leasing, purchase or sale of real estate by a public governmental body where public knowledge of the transaction might adversely affect the legal consideration therefor. However, any minutes, vote or public record approving a contract relating to the leasing, purchase or sale of real estate by a public governmental body shall be made public upon execution of the lease, purchase or sale of the real estate;
(3) Hiring, firing, disciplining or promoting of particular employees by a public governmental body when personal information about the employee is discussed or recorded. However, any vote on a final decision, when taken by a public governmental body, to hire, fire, promote or discipline an employee of a public governmental body shall be made available with a record of how each member voted to the public within seventy-two hours of the close of the meeting where such action occurs; provided, however, that any employee so affected shall be entitled to prompt notice of such decision during the seventy-two-hour period before such decision is made available to the public. As used in this subdivision, the term “personal information” means information relating to the performance or merit of individual employees;
(4) The state militia or National Guard or any part thereof;
(5) Nonjudicial mental or physical health proceedings involving identifiable persons, including medical, psychiatric, psychological, or alcoholism or drug dependency diagnosis or treatment;
(6) Scholastic probation, expulsion, or graduation of identifiable individuals, including records of individual test or examination scores; however, personally identifiable student records maintained by public educational institutions shall be open for inspection by the parents, guardian or other custodian of students under the age of eighteen years and by the parents, guardian or other custodian and the student if the student is over the age of eighteen years;
(7) Testing and examination materials, before the test or examination is given or, if it is to be given again, before so given again;
(8) Welfare cases of identifiable individuals;
(9) Preparation, including any discussions or work product, on behalf of a public governmental body or its representatives for negotiations with employee groups;
(10) Software codes for electronic data processing and documentation thereof;
(11) Specifications for competitive bidding, until either the specifications are officially approved by the public governmental body or the specifications are published for bid;
(12) Sealed bids and related documents, until the bids are opened; and sealed proposals and related documents or any documents related to a negotiated contract until a contract is executed, or all proposals are rejected;
(13) Individually identifiable personnel records, performance ratings or records pertaining to employees or applicants for employment, except that this exemption shall not apply to the names, positions, salaries and lengths of service of officers and employees of public agencies once they are employed as such, and the names of private sources donating or contributing money to the salary of a chancellor or president at all public colleges and universities in the state of Missouri and the amount of money contributed by the source;
(14) Records which are protected from disclosure by law;
(15) Meetings and public records relating to scientific and technological innovations in which the owner has a proprietary interest;
(16) Records relating to municipal hotlines established for the reporting of abuse and wrongdoing;
(17) Confidential or privileged communications between a public governmental body and its auditor, including all auditor work product; however, all final audit reports issued by the auditor are to be considered open records pursuant to this chapter;
(18) Operational guidelines and policies developed, adopted, or maintained by any public agency responsible for law enforcement, public safety, first response, or public health for use in responding to or preventing any critical incident which is or appears to be terrorist in nature and which has the potential to endanger individual or public safety or health. Nothing in this exception shall be deemed to close information regarding expenditures, purchases, or contracts made by an agency in implementing these guidelines or policies. When seeking to close information pursuant to this exception, the agency shall affirmatively state in writing that disclosure would impair its ability to protect the safety or health of persons, and shall in the same writing state that the public interest in nondisclosure outweighs the public interest in disclosure of the records. This exception shall sunset on December 31, 2008;
(19) Existing or proposed security systems and structural plans of real property owned or leased by a public governmental body, and information that is voluntarily submitted by a nonpublic entity owning or operating an infrastructure to any public governmental body for use by that body to devise plans for protection of that infrastructure, the public disclosure of which would threaten public safety:
(a) Records related to the procurement of or expenditures relating to security systems purchased with public funds shall be open;
(b) When seeking to close information pursuant to this exception, the public governmental body shall affirmatively state in writing that disclosure would impair the public governmental body's ability to protect the security or safety of persons or real property, and shall in the same writing state that the public interest in nondisclosure outweighs the public interest in disclosure of the records;
(c) Records that are voluntarily submitted by a nonpublic entity shall be reviewed by the receiving agency within ninety days of submission to determine if retention of the document is necessary in furtherance of a state security interest. If retention is not necessary, the documents shall be returned to the nonpublic governmental body or destroyed;
(d) This exception shall sunset on December 31, 2008;
(20) Records that identify the configuration of components or the operation of a computer, computer system, computer network, or telecommunications network, and would allow unauthorized access to or unlawful disruption of a computer, computer system, computer network, or telecommunications network of a public governmental body. This exception shall not be used to limit or deny access to otherwise public records in a file, document, data file or database containing public records. Records related to the procurement of or expenditures relating to such computer, computer system, computer network, or telecommunications network, including the amount of moneys paid by, or on behalf of, a public governmental body for such computer, computer system, computer network, or telecommunications network shall be open; and
(21) Credit card numbers, personal identification numbers, digital certificates, physical and virtual keys, access codes or authorization codes that are used to protect the security of electronic transactions between a public governmental body and a person or entity doing business with a public governmental body. Nothing in this section shall be deemed to close the record of a person or entity using a credit card held in the name of a public governmental body or any record of a transaction made by a person using a credit card or other method of payment for which reimbursement is made by a public governmental body.
Those records that are found to be public records will
be produced for your inspection and copying under the following guidelines.
a.
You must submit
your request for the records in writing either on the form provided by the
District or in any other form that you may elect to employ in making your
request for open records.
b.
You must either
mail your request or personally appear at the Normandy Fire Protection District
Firehouse at
c.
You must pay in
advance a search fee (at the current hourly rate of: Thirty-three
cents $0.33 per minute) and the cost of copying each document (at
the current charges of: Ten Cents ($0.10) per copy plus the employee’s
hourly pay rate for copying at $0.33 per minute of time expended by
personnel making copies.)
d.
You will also be
required to make a deposit toward the estimated cost of searching our records
prior to the search in such sum as we determine will cover the cost of the
search.
e.
If, due to the constraints
of time at the time that you submit your deposit, we will not be able to
complete the search until a later date or time, you will be advised thereof and
called upon completion of said search and notified that said copies are
available for inspection by you.
f.
Upon completion
of the search for the records, you will be required to pay any excess over the
actual cost of the search and the deposit.
g.
Thereafter, you
will be provided the public records for your inspection.
h.
After delivery of
the public records for your inspection, you will then be required to identify
specifically each item that you want copied.
i.
Thereafter, you
will be required to pay the cost of copying, in advance of copying.
j.
If, due to the constraints
of time at the time that you submit your deposit, we will not be able to
complete said copying until a later date or time, you will be advised thereof
and called upon completion of said copying and notified that said copies are
available for retrievable by you.
k.
You will be
delivered the copies upon appearance, between
l.
You may transact
the aforesaid document request by mail; however, you will be required to pay
the cost of mailing; furthermore, if you fail to inspect the documents
requested and rely on district personnel to interpret your request for
documents, you will take the risk that the documents identified by district
personnel may not be the actual documents you intended to be returned to
you. Any such error then will be at your
cost; thus, any additional search and copying of documents will be at your
cost.
Your
request for public records will be responded to by the custodian of records
within three days after receipt of your request for the public records advising
you as to which records will be produced and the amount of deposit that you
must submit prior to the search for public records.
Finally,
you are invited to search the District’s website for said records:
http://www.normandyfiredistrict.org/
Any
questions about the above procedures should be directed to the custodian of
records as indicated in the letterhead above.
Last updated: 10/15/2007 5:25 PM