Trying to find information on important city business? Welcome to the Stone Age. Years into the Internet revolution, Key West city government still hasn't gone online with important public documents. Considering recent advances in technology, failing to make this information available amounts to intentionally denying the public access to it.
Consider the difficulty and expense of getting a hard copy of a City Commission meeting agenda. If you own a newspaper, you can look over the one copy the city sends you to share amongst your reporters. Otherwise, you have to request one from the City Clerk and pay copying fees— which can range up to around $50, depending on how much business is being crammed into one meeting. Or you can fight over the one copy the city provides to the Fleming Street library, sometimes just a day or two before the meeting.
Making this information available online makes sense in every possible way. Enabling concerned citizens to download documents on pending city business would encourage broader, better informed civic participation. The city would save money on the massive space it needs to store archived materials. The move would also save city employees the time now spent finding documents and copying them for citizens and reporters. And people without the money to shell out for a copy of the agenda wouldn't be limited by the library's hours.
There would be another big benefit to putting city documents in an electronic format— there would be backups in case the originals were lost. As Mayor, I experienced firsthand the frustration of having vital documents disappear.
As part of routine Board of Adjustment business, I was trying to find out if a permit had been obtained for a newly renovated structure. But the combined efforts of the Building and Planning Departments failed to turn up the information. Eventually, we discovered that the documents in question had been sent to an offsite storage building because city hall was then, as now, bursting at the seams with paper records.
But the documents had gotten destroyed by water damage during Hurricane George. So much for finding out about that building permit.
Gaps in the city's data allow unscrupulous individuals to skirt rules on safety, setbacks, building permits, preserving historic buildings and a host of other vital issues.
Creating a comprehensive online database of Key West properties would allow city employees and citizens to tell in an instant what variances, licenses, easements or permits were connected to a particular property. And it would allow city residents to do things like apply for permits online.
Of course, the City Manager and Commissioners do a lot of talking about making these kind of improvements, but it always ends up just talk. Each year, the same short-sighted budgeting decisions are made: "Yeah, it's a great idea, but we don't want to budget the money for it now. We'll do it next year."
It's time for Key West city government to join the modern age and make every public city document available to everyone online. Budget time is coming up, so give your Commissioner a call.