[See Editor’s Note](July 2020) Request for NCSU communications about plate readers 01/01/2015 – 12/31/2018

Activity:

• August 21, 2020 4:09 pm

  3 years ago

  from: Sunshine Request <[email protected]>
  to: Lynda Mottershead <[email protected]>
  date: Aug 21, 2020, 4:09 PM
  subject: Re: Record Request:(July 2020) Request for NCSU communications about plate readers 01/01/2015 – 12/31/2018

   

  Good afternoon Lynda,

   

  Thank you for your reply.

   

  We’ll note this information on our site, and if the sender would like to send a new request, they can reach out to NCSU directly, or via the homepage of our site.

   

  Have a good weekend,
  Sunshine Request

  ---

  Status: Completed
• August 21, 2020 10:19 am

  3 years ago

  from: Lynda Mottershead <[email protected]>
  to: Sunshine Request <[email protected]>
  date: Aug 21, 2020, 10:19 AM
  subject: Re: Record Request:(July 2020) Request for NCSU communications about plate readers 01/01/2015 – 12/31/2018

   

  Sunshine,

   

  The requestor will need to revise their request or pay the Special Service Charge before fulfilling this request.

   

  Best regards,
  Lynda Mottershead

  ---

  Status: Clarification Provided
• August 20, 2020 5:10 pm

  3 years ago

  from: Sunshine Request <[email protected]>
  to: Lynda Mottershead <[email protected]>
  date: Aug 20, 2020, 5:10 PM
  subject: Re: Record Request:(July 2020) Request for NCSU communications about plate readers 01/01/2015 – 12/31/2018

   

  Hi Lynda,

   

  We hope you’re having a good week so far!

   

  We’re following up on our previous email to see if you can provide some additional clarification regarding fees / scope of the request. We received another similar request recently, but we will wait to send in new requests to your office until we receive the clarification requested below:

   

  – Thank you again for letting us know about the potential costs related to the request for “NCSU communications about plate readers 01/01/2015 – 12/31/2018.” It seems like you’re saying that we may only be allotted 4 free hours of search time on the corresponding records. Is that correct?

   

  – If so, please send any responsive documents that are retrieved from the search within the 4 hours. At that time, we will indicate to the requester on our site should they wish to pursue the request further they can reach out to your office directly, or, they may submit a new / narrowed request to our site. Specifically, this is because we cannot commit to pay any fees / associated costs related to any of the requests on our site. We will note any info you provide on our site, for the requester’s future knowledge.

   

  – If it is not possible to process the request without incurring fees, however, please let us know the potential cost, and we will ask that you please cease processing the request at that time. We will mark the request as “completed” on our site.

   

  Additionally, you indicated that we “… may wish to consider revising” the “request by limiting the number of years, number of accounts, or by suggesting more specific search terms.”

   

  – Please note: We are an anonymous site, and we do not know who submits requests to our website. We cannot provide additional clarification regarding the scope of the request, other than what was received on our site. We cannot “cancel”, “narrow”, or “amend”, a request submitted through our site after it has been sent by our Team to the appropriate entity. We will, however, send in new requests in their entirety once we receive them on our site.

   

  Please proceed with the original request for “NCSU communications about plate readers 01/01/2015 – 12/31/2018” as it was submitted.

   

  We really appreciate your assistance!

   

  Have a good evening,
  Sunshine Request

  ---

  Status: Clarification Requested
• August 10, 2020 1:00 pm

  3 years ago

  from: Sunshine Request <[email protected]>
  to: Lynda Mottershead <[email protected]>
  date: Aug 10, 2020, 1:00 PM
  subject: Re: Record Request:(July 2020) Request for NCSU communications about plate readers 01/01/2015 – 12/31/2018

   

  Good afternoon Lynda,

   

  Thank you for letting us know about the potential charges.

   

  Please note that we cannot commit to covering any fees / associated costs related to any requests on our site. We will note the information you provided on our site for the requester’s knowledge.

   

  At this point it appears we’re only allotted four free hours of search time on the corresponding records for this request. Is that correct?

   

  If so, please send any pertaining documents that are retrieved from the search to this email address and then we will note for the requester on our site that if they wish to pursue the request further they will need to do that personally. This relates to the fact that we cannot commit to covering any fees / associated costs related to any requests on our site.

   

  We appreciate your assistance!

   

  Have a good day,
  Sunshine Request

  ---

  Status: Government Processing Request
• August 6, 2020 5:41 pm

  3 years ago

  from: Lynda Mottershead <[email protected]>
  to: Sunshine Request <[email protected]>
  date: Aug 6, 2020, 5:41 PM
  subject: Re: Record Request:(July 2020) Request for NCSU communications about plate readers 01/01/2015 – 12/31/2018

   

  To Whom It May Concern:

   

  NC State University acknowledges receipt of your records request received July 28, 2020. Please be aware that this request would be subject to NC State University’s Regulation 04.00.02(4), which reads in part, “NC State considers more than four (4) hours required to respond to a request as constituting an extensive use of personnel. If preparation of the response requires the extensive use of personnel, NC State will charge a presumed rate of $18.00 per hour for each hour, in excess of four hours, required to respond to the request. The University Records Officer will provide an estimate of the costs for an extraordinary request prior to making the records available for inspection or release and allow the requestor the option of either agreeing to pay the charge or revising the request to narrow its nature or scope. Multiple requests within a short period of time from the same individual will be considered a single request for purposes of determining whether to charge under this section.”

   

  You may wish to consider revising your request by limiting the number of years, number of accounts, or by suggesting more specific search terms. Using the current description, the number of results by year is as follows:

   

  2015: 218
  2016: 537
  2017: 4,903
  2018: 12,329

   

  The estimated amount of time to fulfill this request is 104 hours. There is no charge for the first four hours. Therefore, the estimated cost to fulfill this request is $1800.

   

  Best regards,

   

  Lynda Mottershead
  —
  Lynda G. Mottershead
  University Records Officer
  Office of General Counsel
  NC State University
  304 Holladay Hall
  Campus Box 7008
  Raleigh, NC 27695
  (919) 515-2002

  ---

  Status: Clarification Requested
• July 28, 2020 3:37 pm

  3 years ago

  from: Sunshine Request <[email protected]>
  to: Lynda Mottershead <[email protected]>
  date: Jul 28, 2020, 3:37 PM
  subject: Record Request:(July 2020) Request for NCSU communications about plate readers 01/01/2015 – 12/31/2018

   

  Good afternoon North Carolina State University,

   

  We’ve received another request via our site Sunshine Request www.sunshinerequest.com for information that may be available in your office. If you could please give us a rough estimate of when you think this request will be completed we can plan on following up again around that time.

   

  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.

   

  Here are the details of the request:

   

  Subject: (July 2020) Request for NCSU communications about plate readers 01/01/2015 – 12/31/2018

   

  Message:
  “Hello NCSU public records officer,

   

  I would like to make a public records request for the following information:

   

  Please provide all emails sent or received by any of the following current and former employees, containing any of the following search terms, between 01/01/2015 – 12/31/2018.

   

  Search terms: “plate reader”, “plate readers”, “plate recognition”, “LPR”, “LPRs”

   

  Employees:

   

  Catherine Reeve
  Tom Kendig
  Christine Klein
  Darcy Downs
  David Gregory
  Michael Kennon
  Melissa Watkins
  Than Austin
  Rebecca Manning
  Yolanda Jones
  Chris Dobek
  Brenda Blackman
  Ronnie Bowen
  Ken Ingraham
  Bruce McDonald

   

  Thank you for your assistance!”

   

  **Editor’s Note: In this now completed, similar request from earlier this year (October 2019) New request for NCSU communications about plate readers you said – “You may wish to narrow the scope of your request. Based on the search terms, date range, and accounts there are 12,529 results.” We sent in an email with some additional clarification but weren’t sure if you had seen. Since the new request above is virtually the same as this other request, but with a different timeline, we’d like to ask again that you please process this request based on the same clarifications, if that applies here. Here’s our original clarification message from the previous request:

   

  “We understand that the scope of the request is large and could take some time to process. That is fine with us! As we are an anonymous public records site, we do not have any additional information about the request to provide at this time, other than what we received initially. At this time, please proceed to process the original request as is.

   

  We also like to make sure we have the most up-to-date information for users on our site as we receive new instructions about processing requests in various states / counties. If there is some threshold for the scope of a request and limitations on the number of results / time it could take for NC State University to process the request and it can be denied on that basis, please let us know and we’ll note this on the site.

   

  If the request will not be processed, or will be denied due to the scope, we would respectfully ask where in NC Public Records Law there is an allowance for refusal of records requests based on the volume of the responsive results or time it may take to fulfill the request. Can you please cite this, and also include a copy of any policies NC State University may have around this subject, if that’s applicable?

   

  In this specific case RE: NCSU communications about plate readers, if you do deny the request based on the number of results, please let us know, and we’ll mark the request as “Denied”, rather than “Completed” on our site.

   

  However, if you are able to continue processing the request, please provide a rough estimate on how long it could take to process (whether that’s weeks, months etc.) and we’ll also note that on our site. We’ll wait to follow up again until the time you’ve specified.”

   

  Thank you!
  Sunshine Request

  ---

  Status: Sent to Government
• July 21, 2020 6:10 pm

  3 years ago

  Submitted to Sunshine Request

  ---

  Status: Pending