DERBY — City officials have promised to prepare a new written policy on how staffers comply with record requests, and to compel city workers to participate in an open government training session over the summer.
The move is part of a compromise the city reached with The Valley Indy over Derby Building Inspector Carlo Sarmiento’s mishandling of a Freedom of Information request in March.
The Valley Indy agreed to withdraw a complaint filed with the state’s Freedom of Information Commission provided Derby follows through.
On March 13 Sarmiento declared a four-story vacant building at 195 Main St. unsafe after chunks of stucco fell to the sidewalk below and Derby firefighters noticed the building’s chimney was leaning toward Main Street.
The building at 195 Main St.
During an interview with The Valley Indy March 14, Sarmiento produced a letter from his department regarding safety issues at the building. But Sarmiento said he could not share the letter because he was not sure whether he had mailed it.
The Valley Indy requested immediate access to the letter. Government does not have to grant immediate access, according to the state FOI Act.
When pressed, Sarmiento acknowledged the letter was a public document, but said he would use the FOI Act as a way to delay the release of the document. The building inspector also expressed a concern over how negative publicity would impact his efforts to resolve the issue with the property owner. Click here for a previous post.
At Sarmiento’s request, The Valley Indy used a records request form his department provided.
But no one from the city responded to the request, so, based on Sarmiento’s statements and a lack of response, The Valley Indy filed a complaint.
A hearing on the matter was scheduled for June 6 in Hartford.
An employee from the Freedom of Information Commission reached out earlier this month to both sides to see if a compromise could be achieved.
Then the building department then emailed a copy of the letter to The Valley Indy May 23 without explaining the delay.
The letter, which had been cc’d to Mayor Rich Dziekan and corporation counsel Vin Marino, had a certified mail receipt number at the top of the page, indicating the letter had been mailed.
The letter also inexplicably had the word DRAFT, in handwriting, across the top.
Simply slapping “DRAFT” on a piece of paper doesn’t mean the document can be kept secret.
State law spells out that “preliminary drafts or notes” are allowed to be kept from the public’s view “provided the public agency has determined that the public interest in withholding such documents clearly outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”
The building official’s letter doesn’t seem to fit that exemption, especially because the letter address an issue — pieces of a building potentially falling onto people — that is an obvious public interest.
“I haven’t researched the issue recently, but the nature of the document, i.e. – designated as draft, may not exempt it from production under the FOIA,” Marino, the corporation counsel, said in an email.
The Valley Indy sent an email to all parties May 30 indicating the FOI complaint would be withdrawn based on an email from the city regarding a written policy and training.
The Letter
The Feb, 22 letter, a portion of which is embedded below, states that a Feb. 21 inspection found unsafe conditions at 195 Main St.
The “external stucco is falling off of the building onto the sidewalk which creating a very dangerous condition for pedestrians and traffic,” according to the letter.
The letter stated the owner — listed only as Derby Shores, LLC — had 10 days to address the problem.
The (rather routine) letter that was kept from the public for more than two months.
And Then …
Derby firefighters contacted the building department March 13 about the listing chimney, at which point the city closed a sidewalk on the Main Street side of the building to keep pedestrians and motorists safe.
The city also affixed orange “THIS BUILDING IS UNSAFE” stickers to the building.
The building owner’s engineer certified that the building was structurally sound.
On March 24 the building’s chimney collapsed, sending bricks cascading to the closed sidewalk below. No cars were hit and no people were injured.
More Recently
At a Board of Aldermen meeting in April, the corporation counsel said he was proceeding with a legal action on the city’s behalf against the property owner.
By this time the owner had erected blue netting and scaffolding along the Main Street side of the building to protect the public.
On April 29 the city filed court paperwork to foreclose on the property because no one has paid real estate taxes on the building since 2013. Some $40,000 is owed, according to Derby government.
The case is pending in court. Click here to read Derby’s filing.
