Ray City Fire Report ending July 29, 2024.
- None provided through Open Records Request*
- However, the LCN was notified that those records were available in print for a cost instead in the legally requested form of an electronic record. Currently, the Open Records Keeper is conferring with the City Attorney.
- No reports provided in response to Open Records Request
- However, the LCN was notified that those records were available in print for a cost instead in the legally requested form of an electronic record. Currently, the Open Records Keeper is conferring with the City Attorney, who has yet to respond.
Why are Open Records important? Go on-line to: https://gfaf.org/about/.
So far, Ray City Mayor Brenda Exum gives the appearance that she is against citizens being fully and regularly informed about how the City of Ray City spends taxpayer money. Ray City has roughly about a $1,000,000 budget annually.
*NOTE: When the LCN has made Open Records Request, former Ray City Fire Chief Tony Galardo has asserted that he requires that a person wanting a Ray City Firee Department Report must contact the Berrien County E911 Call Center and obtain a copy of their report from that agency. Fire Chief Tony Galardo then directed the requestor to return to the Ray City Fire Department and its Fire Chief Tony Galardo with the report. The requestor was directed to give former RCFD Chief Galardo the Berrien E911 Call Center report. At that point, the former RCFD Chief Galardo stated that he would then provide a copy of his original report.
None of the additional requirements are a part of the Georgia State Open Records Laws.
In this Chief Galardo process, which seems to parallel former Ray City Police Chief Miller’s directives, there is no provision for reports that are the result of a “walk-in” to the RCPD, which when no one used the Berrien E911 Call Center.
There are no provisions for Ray City reports handled by the Berrien County Fire Department.
The Ray City Clerk states that she is never given a report by the former Ray City Fire Chief and cannot supply a report that she isn’t given. By law, the Ray City Clerk is the official keeper of Ray City records and is the official person who supplies responses to Open Records Requests for Ray City.
The Ray City Councilman David Schools, who is placed by the Ray City Mayor to oversee the Fire Department and Police Department, requires no accountability by either the Ray City Police Department or the Ray City Fire Department. The assumed logic to that directive is that the Ray City Fire and Police Departments do not create records that detail information about their daily job activities. Schools does not seem to endorse public information to taxpayers, who pay for those services and receive no accountability.
The Ray City Mayor Brenda Exum backs Ray City Councilman Schools and, thus, requires no accountability of those city departments through record keeping, reports to council members, nor endorses public information to taxpayers who pay for those services.
The State of Georgia does require an annual yearly report from the that Ray City Fire Department, but even that report requested by the Lanier County News has not been given in response to the LCN’s open records request.
The Ray City government form is the weak type meaning that the mayor does not act as a city manager and assigned council members oversee day to day operations of the department areas assigned to them. Despite this, most of the Ray City councilmen seem to prefer not to gather information and tend to go along and “rubber stamp” approval with whatever the mayor requests.
