Ann Arbor officials explain rationale for $33K-$45K cost estimate for releasing council e-mails

City Council members - with the exception of Mike Anglin, Sabra Briere and Carsten Hohnke - balked at those dollar amounts last week and voted against releasing the e-mails to the public in the form of a free online database.

"I think we made a grievous mistake, and I think we used money as a very weak excuse," Anglin said of the decision.

AnnArbor.com has since obtained records showing the city's rationale for the cost estimates, which Fraser acknowledged in a Sept. 21 e-mail to council members are, "admittedly, little more than educated guesses."

Dan Rainey, the city's information technology officer, estimated it would take 172 hours of IT staff time to scan e-mails dating back to September 2002, when council members first started using computers during meetings. At $45 an hour, that would cost $7,740 in staff time, Rainey estimated, and it would take another $8,000 to purchase software. The total IT expense was listed at $15,740.

Stephen Postema, the city's attorney, said additional expenses include examining, sorting and redacting the contents of e-mails before they're released to the public. To that end, he suggested the city bring Laurie Foondle out of retirement to handle that task at a cost of $30 an hour.

Postema guessed it could take 600 to 1,000 hours to review e-mails from all 172 meetings - nearly six hours per meeting - and create a separate sheet for each meeting, explaining which information was blacked out and why. All total, that was estimated to cost $18,000 to $30,000.

Add the city's review costs to the IT expenses and you get the $33,000 to $45,000 estimate, Fraser said.

Prior to last week's meeting, Fraser and Postema recommended if the council went through with the creation of an e-mail database, it should appropriate $45,000 from this year's general fund balance, with $15,000 budgeted in Information Services and $30,000 budgeted in Community Services.

City officials also indicated it would cost the public considerably less to FOIA the e-mails. Council members were told by city staff it could cost about $14,000 to FOIA e-mails from all 172 meetings. That includes $8,000 for IT staff time and $6,000 for the city's FOIA coordinator and other staff to spend 400 hours reviewing the e-mails for purposes of redaction.

While it could take the city an additional 60 hours in attorney time to review the e-mails, the city has not historically charged the public for that cost, city officials said.

Anglin said he believes members of the public will join forces to file a flurry of FOIA requests for the remaining e-mails.

The city's IT officials say they have access to the mailboxes of all former council members, beginning with the group in office in November 2003 - but excluding three members of the 2008 City Council: Stephen Kunselman, Joan Lowenstein, and Ron Suarez. Their e-mails and network files were deleted, inadvertently, by an IT staff member in January, the city said.

Rainey said there are six archived e-mail boxes of former council members, 11 current e-mail boxes for current members and the e-mail box that belongs to Judge Chris Easthope, which may still contain content from his time as a council member.

Council e-mails are currently the subject of a pending lawsuit. The Great Lakes Environmental Law Center and two downtown businesses are suing the city, claiming council members violated the state's Open Meetings Act on Feb. 17 when they secretly traded e-mails during a meeting about an underground parking structure project on Fifth Avenue.

Ryan J. Stanton covers government for AnnArbor.com. Reach him at ryanstanton@annarbor.com or 734-623-2529.