This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.
It doesn't have to be a big production.
The Longmont City Clerk and the Longmont Archivist can help you to access records that are public according to the Colorado Open Records Act. It is your right as a resident of Colorado to do this. The link above goes to the Colorado Secretary of State's comprehensive guide to CORA, but if all you want is to see proper correspondence with the City Council, there are easier ways, and it will most probably cost you nothing. Requests that produce a large volume of responses and require more than an hour of effort may incur a charge, but simple requests are free.
Here are two easy ways to access the City Council's official email archive. That will include all emails sent from or received into a Council Member's account.
1) A member of the public may call the City Clerk's office and set an appointment to come in and view the Council Open Records email at the records "kiosk" (it is really just a dedicated laptop). In this manner, anyone may search the email box using any search terms they choose. This does not cost anything. Please do make an appointment in advance to ensure that someone will be on hand to help you, and to minimize wait times.
2) A member of the public may also file a Colorado Open Records Request (CORA). This way, the city staff would do the work to search and provide relevant emails to the resident. A simple, single-term search is not likely to take more than one hour of staff time as long as the request is specific and clear. Thus, according to city policy, such a request would also not cost anything. Here's a link to the online CORA form: https://www.longmontcolorado.gov/departments/departments-a-d/city-clerk/records-management/open-records-request-form
CORA requests can become costly if the nature of the request causes paper or microfilm archives to be searched, or if digital data that's not indexed by a powerful search engine must be searched, or if a large volume of results must be copied or printed. But for residents who just want to know what their Council Members are doing and saying, the process is streamlined and free.
