[Adopted 11-6-1972 by Ord. No. 4119-72 (Section 1-13 of Chapter 1 of the Revised Ordinances of
the City of Clifton, New Jersey, 1960); amended in its entirety 9-17-2002 by Ord. No. 6307-02]
Except as may be otherwise provided by law or by other
specific ordinance, copies of public records as set forth in N.J.S.A.
47:1A-2 which are made, maintained or kept on file by the City of
Clifton or any of its officers or employees shall be made available
and supplied by the custodian thereof to any person requesting the
same in accordance with the following fees:
Whenever the nature, format, manner of collation or
volume of a government record embodied in the form of printed matter
to be inspected, examined, or copied pursuant to the Open Public Records
Act (OPRA), N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1 et seq., is such that the record cannot
be reproduced by ordinary document-copying equipment in ordinary business
size or involves an extraordinary expenditure of time and effort to
accommodate the request, including, but not limited to retrieval or
documents from storage or which have been archived, the custodian
of records, as defined by OPRA, shall advise the requester of the
estimate of charges which shall include the actual cost of duplicating
the records and a special service charge that shall be reasonable
and shall be based upon the actual direct cost of providing the copy
or copies. In the event the requester objects to the charge after
having reviewed same, the custodian of records shall not incur said
charges until an agreement is reached between the requester and the
custodian of records.
In the event that an OPRA request involves the reproduction
and or conversion from the medium in which the document requested
currently exists into a medium not routinely used by the municipality,
not routinely developed or maintained by the municipality or requires
a substantial amount of manipulation or programming or information
technology, the custodian of records shall either convert the document
to the medium requested or provide a copy of some other meaningful
medium as provided by OPRA. In the event that the requester refuses
to accept a copy in some other meaningful medium the municipality
is able to convert the documents into, the custodian of records shall
advise the requester of the actual cost of duplication, a special
service charge that shall be reasonable and shall be based on the
cost for any extensive use of information technology or for the labor
cost of personnel providing the service that is actually incurred
by the municipality or attributable to the municipality for the programming,
clerical and supervisory assistance required or both. This section
shall also apply to requests for documents which the municipality
is unable to reproduce in-house due to the document's existing unusual
size or medium, including but not limited to blueprints, plans, film,
slides, CD-ROMS and the like.
The custodian of records is authorized to solicit
and receive estimates in accordance with the Local Public Contracts
Law[1] from third-party document service providers to effectuate
OPRA requests which fall within the scope or this article, and any
estimates from said third-party service providers shall be transmitted
to the requester for his or her consideration and review.
As there are certain time constraints in OPRA, the
custodian of records is authorized to call upon a part-time employee
as needed to aid in the fulfillment of OPRA requests which fall within
the scope of this article. The part-time employee's hourly rate shall
be included in the special services charges to be included in the
estimate of costs where applicable.
In the event that the requester of documents objects
to any charges permitted by this article and no resolution of the
objection may be reasonable accomplished, the custodian of records
shall not incur any charges on behalf of the municipality to fulfill
the OPRA request.