Microfilm transfer of plans

My city building department has some old plans of my house on microfilm. I need to get a paper copy and they tell me each sheet will cost $100 to make. What is involved in transferring microfilm to paper? I cannot imagine $100 a sheet so if I need all the pages from plumbing to foundation to electrical to roof framing etc... I will be out $2000? Can't Kinko do it much cheaper?

MC

Reply to
miamicuse
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Reply to
KTECH

Not without the city building department's approval. Unfortunately, Freedom of Information doesn't mean free copies.

What do you need the old plans for? Can you take a digital camera to the building department and take some pictures of the screen?

R
Reply to
RicodJour

Do you have a laptop, buy a film scanner if they will let you bring it in and do it yourself. A drugstore photo center should charge 50 cents a photo then for 6$ they could put it on CD. But id talk to someone else there and negotiate 100 a photo is a ripoff, maybe they will make a cd of all of them for 100 and you get blowups or keep them on your computer if you wish.

Reply to
m Ransley

I called Kinko's recently about taking drawings from CD to large format print, and the estimate was $10/sheet. Did the city give you a price for copying to digital format?

Reply to
Norminn

Dang, does the City Engineer do it himself? Thats a professional engineering labor rate. They obviously have a "Go Away" pricing structure.

Reply to
PipeDown

call you city councilman and complain loudly thats a rip off

if there no help go to a newspaper.

citys dont like negative publicity

Reply to
hallerb

Reply to
Bennett Price

No, but FOI laws do usually say they can only charge actual costs, and not set the prices to drive away nuisance customers. He is pulling that number out of his ass- go see HIS boss or the city legal department. Betcha if it comes in through legal as an FOIA request, they won't pull that crap.

aem sends....

Reply to
ameijers

Something is very wrong there: Either with your post or the bldg dept. Either info is missing from the post, you're trolling (which I'm NOT accusing you of), or the dept's worthy of a good old fashioned audit. I'd be at the next public meeting and bring it up there to start with and go from there. If it's no go there, start climbing the governmental ladder.

Pop

Reply to
PopS

They will not let me take it out of the building. I request copies and they said they have to send it out and is very expensive. I am going to see if I can get them to project it on their projector and take a pic, but the film is sort of grainy I really don't know how good a pic it will be.

MC

Reply to
miamicuse

They really don't want to go hunt down the information. They first told me if my building is older than 1985 there is no plans for it.

I then told her that in 1996 right after I bought the house from the last owner I had some work done and at that time I asked for info and the gentleman worked there was kind enough to do the research and found the information on microfilm. I saw what I needed on the film and that's it. So I KNOW it's available on microfilm. She then said it's impossible but I insisted. She then said she has to charge me a $50 research fee (after I told her where to look) which I paid. Then she said if she finds any microfilm it will be $100 a sheet to get it printed. I think she wants me to go away. I don't want to piss her off so I will wait till she gets those...then what?

MC

Reply to
miamicuse

I'd ask to see the reproduction fee schedule. It has to be written down somewhere.

R
Reply to
RicodJour

Film printers are plentiful, but fiche printers may be very hard to find. I purchased the microfiche for a broken tv, and obviously it was too hard to read it at the library and remember it at home.

I called a lot of places and only found one fiche printer in all of Baltimore and a 30 mile radius. That was at Towson State University. The public libaries had none. I don't think I called Johns Hopkins. Towson would be closer.

I don't think they will let you take it out, but make sure you have a place to print in advance if they do.

Reply to
mm

Give the guy some face saving ability by pointing out youre a home owner and not a corporation. It's remotely-remotely conceivable that he actually quoted you the wrong price because of that, but even if not, there should be some indirect way to not actually threaten them but , "I was thinking of calling my city councilman (or writing the county clerk) to see if there is some way to do this, but then it occurred to me that you may have thought I was a corporation."

Better yet, in instances like this, just call back and hope you get someone else and start from the beginning, as if you hadn't asked before. You are likely to get an entirely different answer. My friend does a lot of this and says she can get 3 different answers by calling three times. After 20 years she still finds it amazing. She keeps calling until someone gives her an answer she likes. No threats, no lies, she just asks the same question. (in fact if you know who you talked to before, and you should always write the names down when they identify themselves, if it's the same person, hang up and call back in an hour) or call at lunch when either he or the other person will be at lunch)

Do you remember when I had the broken and patched phone line entering my house. The first guy I talked to at the phone company said I *had* to have them repair it and he couldn't tell me how much it would be, until the guy came out. The second guy said I could probably do as good a job as they did, since I soldered it, but if they did do it, it would be free. A totally different answer on both points.

Reply to
mm

Chuckle. If you can verify the size and repro factor of the microfilm, you could almost come up with a machine with print capability, and push it in the door on a cart, for what they want for the work. I think OP called it- they want her to go away. Time to submit it as an FOI request, if her state has an equivilant to the federal FOIA act. (most do.) If they don't, might be fun calling the local newspaper about it. Bureaucrats hate looking stupid in the paper.

aem sends....

Reply to
ameijers

Seems to me a Foi requist should come later. It will take weeks or months. And that assumes FOIA applies to this sort of thing. I would look up what the law says before I relied on it.

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Better to call several times until he finds someone helpful, or to talk to the supervisor (remember, the squeaky wheel gets the grease) who might just say yes, at a reasonable price. If the supervisor doesn't say yes, say that "My friends tell me to make a FOIA request, or, to talk to Mr. Fletcher, the Assistant County Clerk (choose one), but I don't want it to come to that."

[It's good to name the person who outranks him. It shows you know, but that it's only your friends who are that mean. The OP himself is a wonderful guy we'd all like to have a beer with, whether that is true or not.]

When I was first or second year in college, I had bought a suit from one of the two large departemnt tstores in the city I lived in, when I was back home, and they wanted to alter it then but I said I was going to lose weight (4 pounds?), and could they hold off and give me my one free alteration later. And they said yes, and then it took me 12 or

18 months before I came back, more than i expected.

And then they said No. too much time. I said What difference does it make how long I stayed away? No skin off your nose (I was more polite than this. I was very polite.) It costs you the same if I do it this year or two years ago. They wouldn't budge. I went to the store manager, waited a few minutes, then said my piece in 15 seconds with only the essential infomation and he said Fine. Took a total of 20 or

25 seconds.

Strangely, they took it in and later gave it back to me saying it was already altered. And indeed, there wasn't much material to let out. Is it possible I was senile at the age of 18, or did they trim off the excess out of spite? The latter seems very unlikely, and would have beeen difficult to do without leaving evidence.

Reply to
mm

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