§ 4-10. Public documents; searching, accessing and copying

(a) If a person is entitled to a copy of a public record under state law and the city has reasonable access to a machine capable of reproducing the public record, then the city shall provide at least one (1) copy of the public record to the person requesting same; however, if the city does not have reasonable access to a machine capable of reproducing the record, then the person shall be entitled only to inspect and manually transcribe the record.

(b) From the effective date of Ordinance No. 95-013 forward, all offices, agencies, departments and employees of the city, with the exception of the police and fire departments, shall charge and collect the following fees for searching for, accessing, copying, and certifying public records held by the various departments of the city, which costs have been determined to be the actual cost of certifying and copying public records by the city:

(1) Costs and expenses for inspection and searches. Pursuant to IC 5-14-3-8, no offices, agencies, departments or employees of the city shall charge any fee or expense against any person to either inspect or manually transcribe a public record;

(2) Copying of single-sided, standard sized records. For each eight and one-half by eleven (8½" × 11") or eight and one-half by fourteen (8½" × 14") page to be copied ten cents ($0.10) per side for black and white, twenty-five cents ($0.25) per side for color;

(3) Copying of or produced on videotapes, DVD's, CD's, or other electronic medium the greater of, per item:

A. Those reproduced by the City of Lake Station .....$10.00

B. Those requiring reproduction by outside resource…$2.00 (plus 105% of outside costs); or

C. The direct cost of the development of a program, if any; the labor required to retrieve electronically stored data; plus the actual cost of any medium used for electronic output.

(4) Copying of non-standard-sized records. All other public records in sizes other than those listed above and which cannot be reasonably copied using machines located within the offices of the city and which must be taken to an outside commercial copying facility for reproduction shall be charged at the commercial copying facility's rate plus a service charge of ten dollars ($10.00) per order; and

(5) Certification of any group of pages. Certification of any group of pages which can be reasonably affixed together into one (1) package shall be five dollars ($5.00) per package. Certification charges are in addition to any applicable copying charges.

(c) All costs and expenses for public records enumerated herein must be paid in full at the time any such document is requested and all documents must be picked up by the person requesting them from the office from which the document is requested within ten (10) working days of production.

(d) Notwithstanding the provisions of paragraph (2) of Ordinance No. 95-013 [subsection (b) above], elected officials of the city shall be entitled to obtain up to twenty-five (25) pages of copies of public records of the city in any one calendar month free of charge. When requesting copies in excess of such number, such officials shall be charged and pay for record copies at the same rate and in the same manner as other members of the public. Said allowance for free copies shall not accumulate from month to month.

(e) Nothing contained in this section is intended to, nor shall any part of this section be construed as, expanding, reducing, modifying or changing any state law regarding access to public documents; the sole and exclusive purpose of this section is to establish a uniform schedule and method for setting fees and charges associated with access to the city's public records.

(Ord. No. 95-013, § § 1—4, 5-4-95; Ord. No. 2001-15, § § 1, 2, 8-16-2001; Ord. No. 2010-18, 12-16-2010)

refeditor

Ord. No. 95-013, § § 1—4, adopted May 4, 1995, enacted provisions which pertained to charges and fees for searching, accessing and copying public documents. Such ordinance did not specify manner of codification; hence, inclusion herein as § 4-10 was at the discretion of the editor. The user's attention is also directed to § 4-4, Chart of fees, etc.