First, the complainant asserted in her complaint that as a resident and taxpayer of the District her tax dollars already support salary payments to the school district personnel. She asserted that she should not be billed for salary costs to research and locate the public documents already provided to her. The complainant asserted that the school district personnel are on payroll during regular work hours and those employees should therefore not be paid "double".
Second, the complainant stated that the school district's policy outlined below does not specify designated charges for "secretarial research and data collection" as charged. The complainant stated that she should have been informed of any/all charges which deviate from those stated in the policy prior to work performance in order that she could have granted approval. She represented the monies she paid should be reimbursed to her because she was overcharged $89.94 as follows:
(a) 5 copies @ $.10 per page = $ .50.
(b) 249 copies @ $.07 per page = $ 17.43.
TOTAL 254 copies = $ 17.93
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The complainant stated that she paid $107.87 and therefore $89.94 should be reimbursed to her for overcharges.
The District responded in a letter dated January 11, 1995 and summarized their position as follows. The District believed it acted properly to include in its Administrative Regulation a provision that allows the District to collect not only the copying charges but the cost of any time spent by public employees in satisfying the Freedom of Information Act request by the complainant. The District stated the administrative time involved in complying with the complainant's request was a total of 6 hours at $13.75 per hour. The District therefore argued that the District's Administrative Regulation adopted pursuant to the authority of 29 Del. C. §10003 properly allowed the District to recover the cost of public services made necessary by the complainant's refusal to review all the records and identify and extract the records she desired to have copied. The District also asserted, inter alia, that the complainant waived her rights to recover because there was a willingness to abide by the charges and that she
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