Ventura County Grand Jury • 2015-2016 • Agency Response
Response to: City of San Buenaventura Freedom of Information

City of Creceivedrk's Off Aug 08 2016 Ventura Countygrand Jury The Honorable Donald D. Coleman President Judge,*

Published: August 01, 2016 4 pages
View Original PDF

Findings and Recommendations 5 findings

F01 Page 1
Ventura's administrative policy for public records complies with CPRA and is a system that serves the community well.
Related Recommendations (1)
R01
Page 3
Revise Policy 1.1 to ensure that online policy publications have no blank fields and are clearly date/time stamped with “Date Issued” and “Expiration Date”. Additionally, replace the “Date of this Revision” field with “Date of Last Reviewed”. Response to R-01: Neither Agree or Disagree. Current online policies have all applicable date/time fields completed. The City will consider adding the wording for “date of last review” on the policy templates to clarify and make it clear that the reader is reviewing the current copy of the policy.
F02 Page 1
Request for information taken orally or sent by email to a department or individual is not always recorded into the COMCATE system. Therefore, performance statistics are not accurate. Poli Street, Room 204 • P.O. Box 99 • Ventura, California 93002-0099 • 805.658.4787 • Fax 805.641.1046 • cityofventura.net Printed on 100% post consumer recycled paper
Related Recommendations (1)
R02
Page 3
Update and post revision dates for the Public Request Policy and other policies that omit a "last reviewed" date. Response to R-02: Neither Agree or Disagree. The City will review existing policy to determine the best way to ensure the public understands they are reviewing the most current copy of the policy online.
F03 Page 2
Subsequent to an initial request and response, communication between the requester and representatives of Ventura may not be transcribed or recorded within the COMCATE system.
Related Recommendations (1)
R03
Page 3
Revise Administrative Policy and Procedures Manual so all communications associated with a request for public records and information are entered into the COMCATE system. Response to R-03: Neither Agree or Disagree. A majority of the public record request reside in COMCATE. The City will evaluate to determine if it's feasible to enter all requests into COMCATE. As discussed in FI-o2, for phone or counter requests that are handled immediately, it may not be an efficient use of staff time to enter a closed request. <b>R-04:</b> Conduct a regularly scheduled audit to review all policies for compliance with policy 1.1. Response to R-04: Neither Agree or Disagree. The City has an effective policy and procedure process in place with updating policies as needed and adding policies as appropriate. We agree that an audit would be useful but this does not warrant the resources required to do regular audits. On August 1, 2016 the Ventura City Council approved this Grand Jury report response and authorized the mayor to make this reply. The City Manager concurs with the response provided. We appreciate the Grand Jury's efforts in looking into this important matter. ö Sincerely, eneshi Erik Nasarenko Mayor 19
F04 Page 2
Ventura's Administrative Policy and Procedures documents posted online do not indicate the date of current or previous revisions nor the expiration date. Therefore, it is not possible to determine if the City complies with its Public Record Request Policy in Section No. 8.5.
No recommendations for this finding
F05 Page 2
City Policy 1.1 ("Protocols for Issuing, Amending & Deleting Administrative Policies & Procedures") has a last revision date of April 30, 2002, the policy is not in compliance with itself.
No recommendations for this finding

* This report's PDF did not contain easily extractable text and required Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for analysis. There may be minor errors in the extracted findings and recommendations due to OCR limitations with scanned documents.