City Clerk Julie told the commission her office and other departments are receiving large, complex public-records requests that often require extensive cross-departmental gathering and redaction. She said requests often involve multiple departments and voluminous email or attachment searches.

Julie and IT Director Alberto Cerrelli described operational challenges: many records remain in mixed digital and paper formats across departments; searches for email content can return thousands of messages and require iterative narrowing of scope with the requester. Alberto said some requests need vetting after automated search because of exempt or protected information.

Staff described the city's current public-records fee practice: the city charges after the first half-hour of staff labor at the hourly rate of the employee doing the work, plus the cost of physical copies (15 cents per page). The clerk's office reported roughly $4,500 in public-records fees collected in the last year, an amount staff said does not reflect the staff time expended to fill large requests.

Staff recommended evaluating whether a dedicated public-records position or positions are needed; Julie said other similar-sized Florida cities have dedicated public-records staff. City Manager (unnamed) and finance staff expressed concern about adding a $50k-plus personnel cost for a small number of requesters while noting the labor burden is borne across multiple departments.

Commissioners asked for process improvements that might reduce staff time, including ensuring requests are submitted through the official portal and returning invoices for broad requests. Julie and Alberto said the city's request portal issues automated acknowledgments but many requesters contact staff directly and try to bypass the system. Alberto said his team will evaluate commercially available tools and consult with the county to see if there are better workflow options.

The clerk said staff will continue to apply statutory fee rules and that the biggest near-term steps are enforcing portal-only submission and improved request scoping and invoicing for broad requests; any recommendation to add staff would return through the normal budget process.