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Commission approves redacting applicant contact info from online planning packets to deter scammers
Summary
To reduce fraud from automated scraping of online planning packets, the commission approved staff's plan to post outward‑facing packets with applicant names, emails and phone numbers redacted while keeping full records available to commissioners and by public records request.
The planning commission voted to post outward‑facing planning packets with applicant names, email addresses and phone numbers redacted to make it harder for scammers to harvest that information and send fraudulent invoices.
Staff said "scammers have been taking our online PC packets and sending fake fraudulent invoices to our applicants," and described automated scraping by bots that assemble databases of applicants. The law director advised that the underlying public records would remain available on request and that the city is not legally required to post full unredacted packets on the public website.
Multiple public commenters described receiving convincing scam invoices. One attendee said the scam sent multiple emails that appeared legitimate and that she "actually attempted to pay" before the payment failed; she said the attempted payment would have been for "more than $6,000" but did not go through. Staff emphasized that the redaction would apply only to outward‑facing online packets; full unredacted materials would continue to be provided to commission members and remain obtainable as public records.
On roll call the motion to redact applicant contact information for the online packet was approved; the roll call recorded one "No" vote from Mister Emerick and "Yes" votes from the mayor and other listed commissioners. The commission directed staff to post the redacted version online and continue to provide unredacted packets to commissioners.
