Joshua Freed e-mail with mayors/managers since 2016-09-01 (Kenmore)

Phil Mocek filed this request with the Kenmore City Manager's Office of Kenmore, WA.

It is a clone of this request.

Tracking #

PRR2477
Submitted Sept. 14, 2017
Est. Completion None
Status
No Responsive Documents
Tags

Communications

From: Phil Mocek

Subject: Public Records Request: Joshua Freed e-mail with mayors/managers since 2016-09-01 (Kenmore)

Email

To whom it may concern:

## Background ##

On September 15, 2016, Seattle's, Auburn's, Renton's and King County's [Heroin and Prescription Opiate Addiction Task Force][1] issued a set of [recommendations][2] comprising a strategy for confronting the region's growing heroin and opioid epidemic. The recommendations focused on prevention, increasing access to treatment on demand, and reducing the number of fatal overdoses. Among those recommendations was that a pilot project be initiated with the establishment of two supervised consumption spaces--public health facilities also known by several other names, including community health engagement locations, in which people living with substance use disorder would be allowed to use otherwise-prohibited drugs in a clean environment that provides supervision, medical assistance, and connections to health care and long-term treatment. The task force recommended that for the pilot program, one of these facilities be located in Seattle and the other be located elsewhere in King County. About four months later, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray and King County Executive Dow Constantine formally [accepted all recommendations][3] issued by the task force.

[1]: <http://kingcounty.gov/depts/community-human-services/mental-health-substance-abuse/task-forces/heroin-opiates-task-force.aspx>
[2]: <http://kingcounty.gov/elected/executive/constantine/news/release/2016/September/15-heroin-opioid-task-force-report.aspx>
[3]: <http://seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/seattle-king-county-move-to-create-2-injection-sites-for-drug-users/>

On May 11, 2017, a public initiative to ban supervised consumption sites in King County was [announced][4]. Chief sponsor of the proposed initiative (I-27) is Bothell City Council member Joshua Freed. The campaign formed a political action committee called Impaction, and Freed was later [reported][5] as the top donor to the PAC, having contributed $40,000 to it.

[4]: <http://seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/initiative-proposed-to-ban-heroin-safe-injection-sites-in-king-county/>
[5]: <http://seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/injectionsites-signatures/>

In an e-mail dated August 18, 2017, Andy Rheaume, mayor of Bothell, Washington, wrote to Joshua Freed, former mayor and current member of Bothell City Council, reporting that Mr. Freed had previously sent both inaccurate and misleading information about supervised consumption sites to unspecified mayors in multiple King County cities:

> Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 04:34:52 +0000
> From Andy Rheaume <Andy.Rheaume@bothellwa.gov>
> To: Joshua Freed <Joshua.Freed@bothellwa.gov>,
> Jennifer Phillips <jennifer.phillips@bothellwa.gov>,
> Tris Samberg <Tris.Samberg@bothellwa.gov>,
> Paul Byrne <Paul.Byrne@bothellwa.gov>
> Subject: Re: Heroin Injection Sites
>
> Josh,
>
> Its completely [inappropriate] for you to dictate to the city manager and the
> mayor when and how agenda items will be scheduled. Please review the council
> protocol manual. In addition, from what I understand from other mayors,
> cities have no need to adopt a ban on injection sites based on the language
> of the king county council ordinance.
>
> The city manager responsibility is to determine what the staff can handle. It
> is not appropriate for an individual council member to direct a city manager,
> and to think its OK to have a council member write an ordinance for council
> consideration.
>
> You sent an email to king county mayors other than me, indicating that the
> Bothell City Council will ban injection sites in September. The Bothell City
> Council has not weighed in on this issue in any way. For this fact alone, you
> do not have my support to have this added to any agenda while you are on
> council.
>
> Andy Rheaume
> Mayor of Bothell

## Request ##

Pursuant to RCW Ch. 42.56 (Public Records Act), I request all e-mail correspondence between Joshua Freed and your city's mayor and/or city manager since September 1, 2016. This should include messages to or from any e-mail address used by Mr. Freed, either public or private (e.g., joshua.freed@ci.bothell.wa.us, joshua.freed@bothellwa.gov, joshuafreed@mac.com, info@impacwa.com, etc.) This should include but not be limited to any of the messages cited by Bothell mayor Andy Rheaume when he wrote of Mr. Freed's messages to various King County mayors that reportedly contained both inaccurate information and misleading information pertaining to plans for supervised drug consumption sites or to the potential banning thereof.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 5 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Phil Mocek

From: Rob Karlinsey

Subject: RE: Public Records Request: Joshua Freed e-mail with mayors/managers since 2016-09-01 (Kenmore)

Email

I am forwarding your request to our public records officer, Teresa McAllister.

From: Teresa McAllister

Subject: FW: Public Records Request: Joshua Freed e-mail with mayors/managers since 2016-09-01 (Kenmore)

Email

Dear Requester,
In your 10/9/2017 email to Rob Karlinsey (below) you stated this is a "follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on Sept. 14, 2017." The City of Kenmore has no record of a request submitted on 09/14/2017 received from requests@muckrock.com<mailto:requests@muckrock.com>.

I would greatly appreciate it if you could please submit your request for public records by completing the online public records request form at the City of Kenmore's website: http://www.kenmorewa.gov/publicrecordsrequest.

Thank you.

Teresa McAllister
Public Records Officer|Administrative Assistant
City of Kenmore, WA| City Manager's Office
18120 68th Ave NE | Kenmore, WA 98028
Tel: 425.398.8900 | Fax: 425-481-3236
tmcallister@kenmorewa.gov<mailto:tmcallister@kenmorewa.gov> | www.kenmorewa.gov<http://www.kenmorewa.gov/>

From: Phil Mocek

Subject: RE: Public Records Request: Joshua Freed e-mail with mayors/managers since 2016-09-01 (Kenmore)

Email

Dear Ms. McAllister and/or Mr. Karlinsey,

My request was submitted via e-mail to rkarlinsey@kenmorewa.gov on September 13, 2017, at 10:56 p.m., with subject "Public Records Request: Joshua Freed e-mail with mayors/managers since 2016-09-01 (Kenmore)" and message ID <20170914055639.21165.58985@68e0aa9a-a628-4712-a492-3592d2bff9d0.prvt.dyno.rt.heroku.>. In that message I clearly identified the records to which I request access and electronic copies of. I provided e-mail address, fax number, and postal address for delivery of the records. I then requested status updates on September 21, September 16, October 2, and October 9.

Despite the law requiring action on your part within five business days of receipt of such a request, your acknowledgement of my request came via e-mail almost four weeks later, on October 9. You neither provided the requested records, nor directed me to the specific URLs where those records are located on your agency's website, nor informed me that the records do not exist or are exempt from disclosure under the PRA. Nor did you inform me that you require more time in order to complete processing of my request.

Please provide the records I requested, in their native electronic format, by e-mail attachment if feasible or on CDROM if not.

Cordially,
Phil Mocek

From: Teresa McAllister

Subject: Public Records Request No. PRR2477 (Mocek) - Initial Response

Email

Public Records Request No. 2477 (copy attached)
Request Description: "Joshua Freed email with mayors/managers since 2016-09-01 (Kenmore) .
Original request held in Lighthouse Siteprotector folder: Pursuant to RCW Ch. 42.56 (Public Records Act), I request all e-mail correspondence between Joshua Freed and your city's mayor and/or city manager since September 1, 2016. This should include messages to or from any e-mail address used by Mr. Freed, either public or private (e.g., joshua.freed@ci.bothell.wa.us, joshua.freed@bothellwa.gov, joshuafreed@mac.com, info@impacwa.com, etc.) This should include but not be limited to any of the messages cited by Bothell mayor Andy Rheaume when he wrote of Mr. Freed's messages to various King County mayors that reportedly contained both inaccurate information and misleading information pertaining to plans for supervised drug consumption sites or to the potential banning thereof. The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes. In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not. Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 5 business days, as the statute requires."

Dear Mr. Mocek,

The City received your public records request on 10/09/2017 for the records described above. The City performed an email search for emails between Joshua Freed and any city employee or city councilmember, including the Mayor, relating to heroin safe injection sites. All email addresses for Joshua Freed listed in your public records request were searched as well as various related search terms. The search resulted in one email to Councilmember Nigel Herbig from Joshua Freed. A copy of this email is attached. Mayor David Baker has no responsive emails in his personal email account.

Regarding the emails you sent to Rob Karlinsey on September 13, 2017, at 10:56 p.m., September 21, September 16, and October 2, 2017 with subject "Public Records Request: Joshua Freed e-mail with mayors/managers since 2016-09-01 (Kenmore)", our I.T. consultant, Lighthouse Consulting, researched why the emails were not delivered to Mr. Karlinsey's email inbox. Below is his explanation.
Lighthouse Consulting (City of Kenmore's I.T. consultant) - Explanation:
I have researched the issue and I think I found the problem.

First a bit of background
Years ago we implemented a spam filter that is fairly strict when it comes to drug related terms and junk senders. This is largely due to the high volume of spam that contained text and links to buy certain "enhancement" drugs. Being this strict caused issues early on with both CARs and PRRs because so many of the requests were getting caught as spam. To address the problem we configured the spam filter to allow all messages that originate from the web site Public Records Request form to pass the filters regardless of content. Here is an example of how this works:

Example 1 - from brett@lhseattle.com<mailto:brett@lhseattle.com> to tmcallister@kenmorewa.gov<mailto:tmcallister@kenmorewa.gov>. Email contains the names of drugs and is from a junk IP address. Result it message is held in junk box.

Example 2 - from website@kenmorewa.gov<mailto:website@kenmorewa.gov> to tmcallister@kenmorewa.gov<mailto:tmcallister@kenmorewa.gov>. Form submission contains the exact same circumstances from Example 1. Result is message is delivered.

In addition to simply checking terms, we also run a battery of 35 other tests against each message.

The problem
The requestor submitted the below requests to Rob directly via email. That simply means that the messages were subjected to all of the spam filters tests. In this case there were two issues:

1. The message contains specific drug names and was caught by the spam filter as likely spam

2. The senders IP address 184.173.153.37 was considered Junk due to IP Address Reputation up until 10/7 or there about. The IP Address Reputation test is not controlled by the City or us and is rather determined by polling a number of trusted spam databases.

The second issue is that Rob receives in the neighborhood of 30-40 messages per day caught in his spam filter. I have gone through Rob's spam box and I can tell you that with the amount of spam he gets, and I mean actual junk, his spam box has just become white noise at this point is suspect. There are currently 600 messages in there and of those, only about <10 look to be remotely legit.

The fix?
I know we cannot force anyone to submit a PRR in a very specific way but I think the website clearly provides avenues for submitting the requests in ways that will not be caught as spam or rejected. It is not feasible for us to relax the spam filters so that this does not happen again. For some perspective, if we had not had the drug terms turned on, Rob would have received at least 100 of those 600 caught spam messages. Most of which contain links to who knows where and who knows what. Plain and simple, we could have potentially introduced risk to the City's systems.

I really don't have a fix for the future, but I am not sure there is one either except to keep doing what we are doing. For my own information I put myself in the position of a citizen and tried to figure out how to submit a request. Here is what I did:
Google, Bing and Yahoo - "Kenmore public records request", "City of Kenmore public records request", "city of kenmore records request" and "kenmore records request" - http://www.kenmorewa.gov/publicrecordsrequest was the first result for all of the searches. Adding in the RCW to the searches moved it down to position 3-5 depending on the search engine. Kenmorewa.gov website search on the home page - "records request" and "public records request" - http://www.kenmorewa.gov/publicrecordsrequest was the first result for these search terms.

My point is, I am not sure how to be more accommodating to requestors in a way that does not negatively impact the City from a spam filters perspective. Hope this was helpful and let me know if I can get anything else for you.

The City's I.T. consultant (Lighthouse Consulting) will be performing a second search for responsive emails by checking the Lighthouse SiteProtector email boxes (junk mailboxes) for Mayor David Baker and City Manager Rob Karlinsey. If any records are located, the City will provide those within two weeks.

Sincerely,
Teresa McAllister
Public Records Officer|Administrative Assistant
City of Kenmore, WA| City Manager's Office
18120 68th Ave NE | Kenmore, WA 98028
Tel: 425.398.8900 | Fax: 425-481-3236
tmcallister@kenmorewa.gov<mailto:tmcallister@kenmorewa.gov> | www.kenmorewa.gov<http://www.kenmorewa.gov/>

From: Kenmore City Manager's Office

Subject: Public Records Request No. PRR2477 (Mocek) - Complete

Email

Dear Mr. Mocek,

The City completed its search and found no additional responsive records. Unless you should have any questions, the City will consider your public records request closed.

Sincerely,
Teresa McAllister
Public Records Officer|Administrative Assistant
City of Kenmore, WA| City Manager's Office
18120 68th Ave NE | Kenmore, WA 98028
Tel: 425.398.8900 | Fax: 425-481-3236
tmcallister@kenmorewa.gov<mailto:tmcallister@kenmorewa.gov> | www.kenmorewa.gov<http://www.kenmorewa.gov/>

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