Mayor Donchess likes to remind us that a few residents are costing the city thousands of dollars on Right To Know Requests.
The problem is that Mayor Donchess does not want transparency and would like to keep the residents from knowing what he is doing with our tax dollars and how he is running the city.
I did a Right To Know request seeking to get a list of all building permits picked up within this new assessment. In 2018 and 2022 I had no problem getting this information in Excel format however not now.
After waiting the full five days, I received a response at 4:59 PM from the city stating that they would need time to produce this report and that I would not receive it until November 15, 2024. However, their following sentence stated that they were unsure of what I was asking for, so I needed to give the city clarification. The city was looking forward to my clarification so that they could identify which reports were responsive.
I replied to the response and stated that either Mr. Perrin and/or Mr. Cummings should not be answering questions that they have no knowledge of. My request should have gone directly to the Assessing Department, and it would have been answered right away because it is a push-bottom report.
Both Mr. Perrin and Mr. Cummings responded again to my request by sending me over 3,800 pages of building permits dating back 34 years. One would think that the city is trying to hide something.
The response violates RSA 91-A because it does not meet the range of data I requested. The report I requested should be between 20-50 pages depending on the format in Excel. Instead, I received over 34 years of data in a PDF, an unsortable, and searchable record that is over 3,800 pages long.
When the city stops playing games with the residents and sends them the information that they are actually requesting, the lawsuits will stop.
