Gateway Technical College takes seriously the principles of open government and open records. As such, we’ve developed a policy outlining our open records policy. We encourage those interested in our policy, or obtaining public records, to reference Policy F-100a: Release of Public Records and Property Notice.
Public records requests
Gateway’s president’s office has been designated as the legal custodian of the college for public records. All open records requests will be directed to the president’s office. Wisconsin state statute 19.32(3) does not require you to put the request in writing, identify yourself or state the purpose of the request. However, email would be considered the preferred and most efficient way to submit a public records requests. Requests can be submitted to David Elliott at elliottd@gtc.edu.
Wisconsin state statute 19.35(1)(h) requires the request to be reasonably specific as to subject matter and length of time involved.
We will review your request and contact you if a fee will be required to locate records responsive to your request, which the Gateway has the authority to pre-bill for public records requests, per Wis. Stat. § 19.35(3)(f).
Applicable fees must be paid before the request can be fulfilled.
Efficient requests
Below are a few suggestions on how to make your request efficient and to obtain exactly what you need.
- Make the request specific. Vague requests for "any and all records" on a general topic tend to be very time-consuming and may be costly. Making requests as specific as possible will cut down on the time required to process requests and will likely decrease or potentially eliminate fees.
- Staff. Do you know which staff members are included in your search? If so, you might want to mention them.
- Keywords. Do you know which keywords are connected to the information you seek? You may want to include that.
- Dates. Whenever possible consider including a date or date range.
- Record formats. Are the records you need specific to a particular format? Such as, are you seeking emails? Notes? Or all records to a specific topic? We need to know what types of records you are seeking in order to make sure we include all relevant programs in our search.