Public Records Requests

The Town of Beaux Arts Village provides access to public records under the provisions of the Washington State Public Records Act RCW 42.56.  This Act defines a "public record" as any writing containing information relating to the conduct of government or the performance of any governmental or proprietary function prepared, owned, used, or retained by any state or local agency regardless of physical form or characteristics.  RCW 42.56.230 - .480 exempts certain records from disclosure, as do other state statutes, including privileged attorney-client communications, personal information about residents or staff, lists of individuals requested for commercial purposes, and other exemptions listed by the Washington State Attorney General's Office.

The Clerk/Treasurer serves as the Town's Public Records Officer. Requests for public records may be filed by email or US mail using the Public Records Request form below.  When describing the desired records, please state the nature of the records sought, including specific topics, dates, and other information that will define the desired records as clearly and as narrowly as possible.

The Clerk's Office will respond to a request for public records within five business days, not including the day the request is received. During the five-day period, the Clerk will either complete the request in full or in part, deny the request, or inform you that we need additional time to process your request due to workload volume or legal review. If more time is needed to fulfill the request, an estimated date of completion will be provided.

Charges for public records are as follows:

• Copies of records that already exist in electronic form - no charge.
• Hard copies of letter- and legal-sized records (no more than 25 pgs) - $0.15 per page.
• Hard copies of oversize documents or for more than 25 pgs of any size - charge based on actual cost to reproduce.
• Mailing hard copies to the requestor - charge based on actual cost to mail.

Depending on the size of the request, the Town may require a deposit for copies to be made in-house of 10% of the estimated cost based on the number of pages.  If copies must be made by an outside vendor, the Town may require a deposit equal to the vendor's estimated cost.

Please note that local governments are not required to create documents to comply with a request for specific information. Rather, they must produce existing records for review and copying. If the records requested are not in electronic format, the Town will not scan the records to satisfy a requestor's desire for electronic materials unless the requestor pays for the cost of scanning by an outside vendor.

Also, local governments are not obligated to compile information from various records so that information is in a form that is more useful to the requestor.