Plant City Insider

On December 6th, 2024, the Plant City Insider Team emailed the city clerk’s office asking for information regarding the then-upcoming city commission meeting on the 9th of December, 2024. We specifically asked for the documents related to a project labeled PB-2023-25. This project was a proposed final plat approval for a “Holloway Landing Project” (the final approval needed for a new housing development). This project was not referenced anywhere else that we could publicly find. Therefore, we contacted the City Clerk’s office for more information. However, after sending that email we received no response even though we have a feature with our email provider that allows us to see when our sent emails have been read/viewed which they were.

On December 10th, 19th, and January 3rd, we sent follow-up emails asking the same questions, except this time with stronger wording that conveyed that it was an official request under Florida Sunshine Law. We received no response even though each and every email was opened/viewed. In the final email we sent to the city clerk’s office we emailed two additional individuals that work for the city clerk but continued to receive no response. We have contacted the local state attorney’s office and are waiting to hear back from them.

We understand that the city has many staff and are quite busy when it comes to the day-to-day operations of the city. However, after four separate attempts and ample time given, we feel that the city should be required to at least give us a response of any kind, as stated under Florida Sunshine Law. We at Plant City Insider do not place any blame on any specific individual as we do not know the extent of what exactly happened and why all of our emails were ignored.

We will include a link here to the official Florida statutes website, which details the Florida Sunshine Law. The Plant City Insider Team believes that this is not an appropriate way that the city should be conducting its operations, and we simply ask that they be transparent and allow us and anyone else who requests access to these documents that ability.

Historically, the city used to publish the full record of all city commission meetings and their agendas. However, when the city redesigned their website several years ago they ceased to publish their agendas and other project-related documents and forced the public to “request” these documents from them.

Our last email sent to the city clerk duly asked for a request for comment on any future story to be written in regards to this subject, to which we received no reply.