Trying to get a copy of something from the city is like trying to pull teeth from a tiger that hasn't eaten in days and is looking at you as its next potential food dish.

Shortly after the ticket arrived Mr. Strnad tried to call 311 and get a copy of the Service Request Order that was taken on September 21, 2000 - the day before the incident. 311's replied they couldn't do that. When asked for the name and phone number of the person in charge of 311 they could only give the name. Fax number? Well don't expect that either. 311's approach is to droll out limited information and apparently on a need to know basis. Unfortunately, the attitude is you never need to know - anything.

Well that approach doesn't sit very well with me, nor should it with you, the reader. We have a right to public information and 311's data is public data. So, how do we go about getting it?

We tried calling Corporate Council for the City of Chicago. For three days we waited for a fax that would have the special form we needed to acquire information from the city. If you're interested in getting information yourself, we are providing the form online; just visit the download section and find Freedom.

After three days we finally decided to call the City Clerks Office. Laski is the City Clerk of Chicago. This office is probably one of the most efficient, if not the most efficient, offices the city has. That office has stood the test of time meaning that for the past two years whenever we needed something related to his office we received it in an timely fashion.

Within two minutes of our request we had the Freedom of Information form that we needed faxed to us.

311 Here We Come

The first recipient of our Freedom of Information request was 311. We wanted all the information that they had available relating to a specific reference number.

We eventually did find the fax number to 311 and faxed it over. By 8:30 AM the following day we received a call from the city saying the information was available. Unfortunately, the lady gave us the wrong address as to where we should pick it up.

Streets and Sans - Your Next

Seeing that Carothers likes to use old time practices of the machine, we filed under the Freedom of Information Act to receive the information pertaining to all the garbage tickets that were written in the 29^th Ward during the month of September. You can view that letter from the Streets and Sans index page.