Staff said the new policies will clarify and streamline the process and recoup the actual costs of completing time-intensive requests for emails and documents.
Iowa's open records law allows people to copy and inspect most government records, with some exceptions.
The number of records requests fielded by Davenport has risen in recent years, though it fell slightly last year, said Davenport Deputy Clerk Brian Krup.
Davenport city administration, excluding the police department, received 299 requests in 2020, 420 requests in 2021, 342 requests in 2022, 594 requests in 2023, 641 requests in 2024 and 547 requests in 2025.
The police department has a separate records request portal. Krup said the police department received 2,603 requests in 2025 and, when fully staffed, employs 11 people to help process records requests.
Some requests are more time-intensive than others.
Examples of routine requests, which take less than 30 minutes, include a list of building permits for a month, open or active code violations for a specific property, copies of certificates of occupancy and phase one environmental site assessments. Those are often requested as part of a due diligence process for real estate transactions, Krup said.
The city also receives more resource-demanding requests. In one example, someone requested all emails and text messages sent and received by a manager-level employee for the past 16 months, which resulted in 4,000 emails. Another requested all communications for an elected official for a four-year period, which resulted in about 80,000 emails.
Krup said city staff needs to review each email for confidential information. Personal identifiable information, such as Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, or personal phone numbers or email addresses are considered confidential, as are most information in an employee's personnel file and attorney work product.
A third example Krup gave of a time-intensive request was for a report from 2006 filed at the Scott County Courthouse. Krup said the city made every reasonable attempt to find the two-decade-old report in city files, but was unable to.
The new administrative policy, number 5.1, went into effect Wednesday. City Attorney Sam Huff said the new policy is based on guidance from the Iowa Public Information Board.
Under the new policy, records requesters submitting electronically need to use the city's online platform JustFOIA. Requests can also be submitted in writing, by phone call to the deputy clerk, and in-person at City Hall. That change was made, in part, Krup said, because people were trying to request records through Facebook Messenger.
WHAT CHANGES DID THE CITY MAKE TO ITS RECORD REQUESTS FEE POLICY?
The city also is updating its fees and will require a deposit before work is done on a time-intensive request.
For requests that take more than 30 minutes to complete, the city is transitioning from a set per-hour fee schedule to the hourly wage of the staff member preparing the request.
Previously, the fee schedule was $22 per hour for a clerical staff member, $33 per hour for a manager and $40 per hour for the legal department to review and redact confidential information.
Now, it will be tailored based on which staff member is handling the request. The city will provide requesters with an estimate of cost up front before compiling the records.
"The point of the fee is to recoup costs," City Attorney Sam Huff told council members. "Not to be a barrier to records. So we'll be trying to always estimate on the conservative side. But we also don't want to under-quote either. Nobody wants to receive a quote and then it doubles when you try and actually get the records. So we try to be conservative, but also realistic, especially on the larger requests."
Legal staff time, which is more expensive, according to code, can only be spent on records that are in the legal department or are being redacted for known confidential information.
City staff said they expect fees to go up as a result of the new policy.
The first 30 minutes a staff member spends on a request is free. If multiple departments are working on compiling information for a request, the new policy clarifies that each staff member's first 30 minutes spent are not billable.
Under the new policy, the requester will also now have to pay a deposit of the estimated fee amount before staff starts work on the request. If it takes less time than estimated to compile the records, the excess amount of the deposit will be refunded.
Previously, the city typically let requesters know the estimate of cost up front and then required payment once records were compiled and ready to release. Under that policy, the city ran into cases where hours were spent compiling records and the requester refused to pay. The recourse then was simply to withhold the records.
OTHER POLICIES AROUND RECORD REQUESTS ALSO CHANGING
Also new, Krup said, is that the city will not continue to communicate with requesters through the JustFOIA system once a request is complete. If the requester wants to request new records, they'll have to submit a new request.
"A municipality's duty is to provide records," Krup said. "And we are under no legal obligation to continue communicating with a requester once that request is complete."
Krup said the requester can email city staff with follow-up questions.
The retention of records requests is also changing. Going forward, requests will only be retained on the city's JustFOIA website for two years, Krup said. Currently, the city has stored about seven years worth of requests on JustFOIA.
At-Large Ald. Jazmin Newton asked for data on the number of requesters, not just the number of requests and urged city staff to track their time spent on records requests.
"When you're telling me some of these are 4,000 or 80,000 emails, that's significant, and I think we should be tracking that," Newton said.
City Administrator Tim Gleason indicated that the numbers will be helpful in determining whether the city needs to hire more staffers to help process FOIA requests, which he said could be coming.
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