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 to Sender 08/14/24: The submission above has been marked as “Completed.” As written it is unclear what specific searchable public record the sender would like to receive. This seems to be more of an informational question for a Government entity to answer, rather than a clear request for a specific record.
Additionally – please note:
Our Team has experienced long delays (and other issues) with the fulfillment of records requests we’ve submitted to the City of Northwest, NC since 2022. You can find those requests by searching for “north” or “northwest” on our website. In those instances we have expressed our concerns to the City about their responsiveness, timeliness, and request fulfillment process overall.
Just to give two examples:
– We were ultimately able to complete a March 2024 request for basic salary data, on May 06. However, we’d marked the request as as “Denied” on April 25 — as we did not receive any response from the City throughout March and April. Basic salary data is simple to provide, and is very commonly produced by many other NC entities:
(March 2024) Request for City of Northwest, NC Government: List of all current employees and salaries. As of the present day.– We also submitted a request to the City on December 12, 2023 that we ultimately had to mark as “Denied” (for the second time) on June 28, 2024 — as we did not receive any response from the City throughout May and June:
(December 2023) City of Northwest, NC Government: Multi-part request. GPS activity data for all Full-Time Officer Police vehicles used 01/01/2023 – present. And the total number of “vehicle wrecks” that have happened to Police Dept. vehicles 01/01/2022 – present.Besides a phone number, general Contact Form (Donna), email address for City Clerk / Finance (Donna) and Mayor (Sheila), there still isn’t any other contact info on the City’s website. This would be particularly useful to have in the event that we don’t receive responses to our emails and calls: https://cityofnorthwest.com/
Due to the number of requests we’ve submitted to the City that have resulted in issues or delays — until we receive another response from the City (or until there are improvements made to their website / records fulfillment process), unfortunately it won’t be possible for our small Team to continue to spend time sending them new requests. We apologize for this inconvenience!
In the meantime – we’d ask that you please consider calling / emailing / reaching out to the City directly for assistance with any new requests you’d like to make.
Sunshine Request will not fulfill the following types of requests:
☀️ 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.
Thank you for using Sunshine Request!