Processing Public Records Requests
Within five (5) business days of receipt of the request, the public records officer will do one or more of the following:
- Make the records available for inspection or copying;
- Give the requester a link to document on Web page;
- Provide in writing a reasonable estimate of time when records will be available;
- Request clarification, by telephone or in writing, if the request is unclear or does not sufficiently identify the requested records;
- Deny the request, in whole or in part.
If the requester has not received a response from the agency within five (5) business days from the date of filing a public records request, the requester is encouraged to contact the public records officer immediately to ensure that the request was received by the agency.
Hours for Inspection of Records
Public records are available to be scheduled for inspection and copying during normal business hours, Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., excluding legal holidays. There is no fee for inspecting public records.
Cost for Public Records
There is no cost to inspect public records or to download records that are posted on agency websites.
The cost for photocopies of public records, printed copies of electronic public records, or for the permitted use of any agency equipment to photocopy a public record, is fifteen cents (.15) per page.
The cost to scan a public record into an electronic format or for the permitted use of agency equipment to scan a record into an electronic format is ten cents (.10) per page.
An agency may charge for the actual cost of any agency provided digital storage media or device (e.g., CD, DVD, thumb drive, etc.), the actual cost of any container or envelope used to mail any copies to a requester, and the actual costs of postage or other delivery charge incurred by the agency.
The cost for each four electronic files or attachment uploaded to email, cloud-based data storage service, or other means of electronic delivery is five cents (.05).
The cost to transmit public records in an electronic format or for the permitted use of agency equipment to send records electronically is ten cents (.10) per gigabyte.
Pierce County and its applicable agencies will waive copying or transmission fees for the first ten pages of records responsive to a request, to include an equivalent quantity of electronic data when the electronic data can be printed in page format.
A requester is permitted one fee waiver in a 30-day period, regardless of the number of requests submitted by the same requester during that period. Waiver is not required for any record request that includes one or more of the same request terms as another request previously or concurrently submitted by the requester.
For all charges and fees, please refer to Pierce County Code 2.04.030 E. Costs.
Closing Abandoned Requests
The requester must claim or review the assembled records within 30 days of notification that the records are available for inspection of copying. If the requester fails to claim or review the records within the 30-day period or make other arrangements the public records officer may close the request.
Email Records
The timestamp on emails is expressed in the current time zone, which may be different than how timestamps are expressed elsewhere in the message content. This includes, but is not limited to, emails in local standard time vs. daylight savings time, or the time zone location of an email sent from one time zone to another.
