Pat DeAngelis FOIs Cost Taxpayers Another $5,000!

"FOI requests taking their toll 
  What’s the cost for freedom of information? $5,000 and 26 hours. 
  Middlebury’s Chief Financial Officer Michael Belden told the Board of Finance on Wednesday night that a recent influx of Freedom of Information Act requests have made the town’s finance depart ment “collapse.” Belden said town departments have clocked more than 26 hours filling the re quests.  The board’s chairman, Jonathan Dayton, said one resident “who we will not name” was the source of most of the FOI requests.
  “The amount of work that is being done for these requests is unbelievable,” Dayton said. “We have other things we have to do, like payroll. We fought viciously with this one individual to give us more time, but he threatened to take us to the FOI Commission.”
  After 15 minutes of discussion, the board voted to move $5,000 from the town’s contingency fund to hire a part-time worker to handle the FOI requests. "

It seems that Mr. DeAngelis is wasting more of the taxpayer’s money.  Another $5,000 to hire a clerk to handle the FOIs. The $5,000 is nothing compared to what the Police Department paid.  I don’t know what Mr. Belden and Mr. Dayton are complaining about. 

Its okay for Mr. DeAngelis to waste thousands of dollars on taxpayer money on his witch hunts, but the MVFD can’t spend $400 from a Westover GIFT to purchase lime green T-shirts for their kids at the annual FD picnic. Why lime green for an FD event?  The picnic was held at Quassy.  The lime green shirts were chosen so parents could pick out their children in the large crowd.

I think the next FOI Mr. DeAngelis should file, is to see how much money has been wasted on all his FOIs.  We know the Police Department number is a whopper, but we do not have the exact figure yet.  What grand information was discovered through this waste of taxpayer money.  Stay tuned.