Dear Editor,
As most know our property was abated by The City of Vinton last year.
I have asked for some information that falls within the guidelines of the Freedom of Information Act.
Bob(City Attorney) Fischer stated that our request for information from the City is harrassment and/or we are trying to relitigate our case through Freedom of Information and the Iowa Public Information Board. That is definitely not the case. We are just trying to get the information that we are entitled to.
The first abatement The City originally said we owed over $6000 but when they submitted the cost to the Court it dropped over $4500. We have asked the City Council at least three times to let me ask about some of the charges from The City Attorney.
One can only assume time and fees on the statement are from Fischer Law. The picture is the statement from the prior abatement.
The highlighted charges we question. Chris Ward filled out and signed the "verification of account" so that charge is false. There were NOT any subpoenas returned to the court. There are specific rules in Iowa on how subpoenas must be served, and after they are served the "server" returns their statement to the court that subpoena was legally served. Also the three people that those subpoenas would have gone to were Ted Paxton, Chris Ward, and Tammy Stark. I don't believe they required subpoenas. Regardless, no subpoenas were legally served and returned to the court so if Fischer filled them out he didn't have them legally served so we believe those charges are on him. That adds up to $400 that the city paid.
Then there are the amounts with no units of time. $150 or $200 an hour? How are we to know how those charges are decided.Poor judgement on The City Council for not requiring an accounting for Bob's time on his billing and for not having a contract outlining fees! Poor billing practice by Fischer Law for not accounting for time.This abatement they charged us about $20,000. I don't think it is asking too much to have those charges itemized. We were assigned an account number, so our charges should all be on a computer under that account number, and a statement for each charge would have to be submitted. I would not think that would be that hard unless their bookkeeping is that sloppy. A copy of those statements is one thing we are asking for.
As a citizen of the U.S. I am entitled to that information under the Freedom of Information Act. As the people being charged that amount, it only makes sense to see where that amount comes from. I find it hard to believe anyone would blindly pay an amount like that without an itemized bill! The city also said they received money, $500, from Marion Iron for salvage which was credited to us. We asked for the receipt, Ward stated that there isn't one. It is an Iowa law that salvage yards must give a receipt! How would they justify that amount without a receipt for auditors? We know that the steel they removed would have been worth more than that so we wanted to know what they took. Why won't they give us a copy of the receipt?
We did receive a few things from the city, one of them was the City Attorney's statement to the city. It had a few charges pertaining to us, it also had several other charges that pertained to other people or issues for the city.
We know people have their own opinions of what was done here. I'm asking that no matter what your thoughts are that you can look past them and hold the city accountable. That they follow THEIR ordinances and Iowa law.
We are entitled to the information we asked for, just as any other person is entitled to it. Anyone could ask to see what the city charged us for, or any other information about city finances or most anything else you want to know. There are very few things that can be denied. That is what the Sunshine Law is about. Government accountability and transparency.
So why have we been denied?
Tim and Jane Osborn

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