Editor’s Note: Sunshine Request makes no claim as to the veracity of any statements or information contained in any of the requests, or public records, we receive.
Editor’s Note 05/15/24: The submission above has been marked as “Completed.”
The sender is referring to a previous Editor’s Note we provided on a similar submission in May:
[See Editor’s Note] (May 2024) Submission related to “City of Northwest, NC” question about “GPS recording devices” on city vehiclesIn that instance, the sender stated: “I’d like to ensure GPS recording devices have been installed and are operating on all city vehicles including police vehicles as ratified by city council in either 2022 or 2023. Council mandated all city vehicles would have GPS logging installed.” This is a statement, not a clear request for a public record.
In regard to the new submission today — as it’s written the sender is asking us to ask the City questions about their GPS practices: “… as of today, do all City of Northwest, NC owned/operated vehicles have GPS monitoring devices installed in them as mandated by City Council? If not, why not since that was mandated by City Council”. These are informational questions for the City to answer, not a clear request for a public record.
Please take a moment to review our FAQs and Policies pages that clarify the types of requests we will not fulfill.
If you would like to submit questions for the City of Northwest to answer, we encourage you to reach out to them directly for assistance. Alternatively — if you would like to submit a new request through our website, please clearly indicate the exact public records that you would like to receive.
Sunshine Request will not fulfill the following types of requests:
☀️ Requests that include profanity, personal statements, opinions, possibly defamatory statements, or other unnecessary info that is not relevant to making a records request.
Please do not include personal opinions and statements in the request’s Subject or Message. Please omit any extraneous statements that are not specific to the exact information you’d like to receive. This is not relevant information pertinent to the processing of a records request, and the request will not be published.
☀️ Requests that are only informational questions, and requests that are not addressed to government entities.
Sunshine Request is a site built to make requests for public records to the government — Public records are recorded information such as documents, government emails, and data sets.
In the interest of preserving our team’s time to focus on the high volume of requests on our site, as well to respect the staff time of government entities fulfilling records requests, Sunshine Request will no longer fulfill “requests” that are just informational type questions for government entities to answer.
We also will not fulfill requests made to non-government entities.
It’s the requester’s responsibility to write the request in a manner that clearly specifies a record that is being requested, and to what government entity it should be sent.
☀️ Requests that are incomplete, non-specific, or vague.
While we do proofread requests we receive for general spelling and clarity, we may choose not to fulfill the request if it is incomplete, overly broad, or it is unclear what specific information the requester hopes to receive. In this case, the sender may rewrite and resubmit the request.
It’s the requester’s responsibility to write the request in a manner that clearly specifies a record that is being requested, and to what government entity it should be sent.
☀️ Please be specific:
It is important that what you are requesting is specific and reasonable, and is an actionable records request. Please specify the exact type of records you’d like to receive, rather than any “possible” or “potential” info that could be searched. Remember that the larger your request, the more time it usually takes to fulfill. Specificity will often help reduce the amount of time needed to process the request.
It is important that a request has a clearly written and complete Subject and Message, and also specifies the Government Entity (or entities), City and/or County, and State to which the request should be sent. If applicable, please also include any responsive timelines for the info that should be requested.
While we do proofread requests we receive for general spelling and clarity, we may choose not to fulfill the request if it is incomplete, or it is unclear what specific info the requester hopes to receive, or if it violates our policies.
Before submitting a request, please take a moment to review our tips for How to write and make a successful request. If you have additional questions about our site or how to make requests, please check out our FAQs or Policies page.
☀️ Code of Conduct: Please do not use Sunshine Request or any of the results of public records requests to harass government entities / employees, businesses, private citizens / individuals, or otherwise.
☀️ Please note that we cannot pay any fees / associated costs related to any of the requests on our site. If it is not possible for a Government Agency to process our request without incurring fees, then it is the responsibility of that Agency to let us know what the potential costs may be — at which point we will ask that they cease processing the request. We will mark the request as “Completed” on our site, and the sender can contact the Government Agency directly, should they wish to further pursue a request.
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