The City of Moose Jaw wants nearly $25,000 before it will release documents related to the Southeast Industrial Park.
The Moose Jaw Express submitted a freedom of information (FOI) request to city hall on May 11, asking for all records from 2018 to 2020 about anything and anyone related to the Southeast Industrial Park, South East Industrial Park, Industrial Park, Moose Jaw Agri-food Industrial Park, and SEIP.
The Express was interested in finding out more about this topic, especially in the aftermath of the collapse of the agreement between the municipality and Carpere Canada. Heralded as the largest land sale in city history, Carpere Canada — a private investment and management company that focuses on agricultural opportunities — planned to purchase 312 hectares (780 acres) of municipal land in the southeast corner of the city for $7.8 million.
In preparation for this purchase, the municipality spent millions of dollars to upgrade the industrial park and install services such as sewer and water. Now, the only noticeable things out there are wood stakes and a single fire hydrant.
On June 4, city clerk/solicitor Myron Gulka-Tiechko emailed the Express with an update about the FOI request.
“The City has done a preliminary search in furtherance of your request. Given the two-year time span covered by your request, as well as the non-specific account holders, the City estimates it will take approximately 60 hours of time to complete the review requested. As such, FOI legislation authorizes a fee estimate based on $15.00 per half hour, half of which is payable prior to the search continuing,” he wrote.
“The fee for the 60 hours’ effort is $1,800.00. The City will require a payment of $900.00 in order to proceed. In addition, there is a photocopying fee of $0.25 per page for each page provided. For your information, there are approximately 98,447 items related to the search terms requested. This additional potential photocopying cost would be approximately $24,620 applied to this request.
“I should note that in the event the actual time preparing the records for release is less than the estimate, you would be credited the difference,” he added. “In the event the time required is greater, however, there would be no additional charge.”
Gulka-Tiechko suggested that, as an alternative, the cost for the search could be reduced if the Express narrowed the time frame of the request and/or the individual records desired.
As a comparison, the Moose Jaw Express office charges 10 cents to photocopy a single side of a black and white document, while it charges 16 cents to photocopy a double-sided document in black and white.
City hall wants the Express to pay another large fee — but not nearly as outrageous as the first request — to access documents related to a different topic.
On May 15 the Express submitted an FOI asking for anything and anyone to do with Vancouver businessman, Chinese businessman, Asian businessman, Chinese investors, Asian investors, Vancouver investors, Morris Chen, Yiming Luo and Yee-Ming, from 2017 to 2020. These keywords appeared in other documents city hall provided about Carpere Canada.
In a separate email, Gulka-Tiechko explained it would take about 14 hours to complete this search, which at $15 per half hour, would be $420. Since there are roughly 800 pages to search, at 25 cents per page, that would add an extra $200, for a total of $620.
The city clerk again suggested that, as an alternative, the cost for the search could be reduced if the Express narrowed the time frame of the request and/or the individual records desired.
The Moose Jaw Express is still determining what course of action to take on these documents.
