The City of Nanaimo will add a new employee to take care of freedom of information requests as it handles more requests for information in the first six months of this year than in the whole of 2015.
The city announced last week an employee will be hired in the area of Freedom of Information as part of a reorganization.
Tracy Samra, Nanaimo's chief administrative officer, said the volume of work in legislative services is huge and it's been asking for support for quite some time.
Statistics released by the City of Nanaimo show there have been 125 freedom of information requests between Jan. 1 and June 24, with 17 outstanding.
In comparison, the city had 126 requests in total in 2015, and 108 in 2014.
The majority of requests are for specific buildings, such as zoning and permit information, according to the city, followed by requests for reports on motor vehicle accidents, house and building fires, and people’s own personal information.
Samra said she is happy with how the city handles it freedom of information requests.
“It’s just the volume. We have only one person processing it. That’s not very much.”
Samra said she might also add another position to legislative services to help with council meeting agendas and minutes.