Connecting you to what’s happening around town

Our Town

*A CROZET UNITED EXCLUSIVE REPORT*

Albemarle County’s Project Heron - Part 5

When exactly did the County destroy the Project Heron documents?

In last week’s issue, we reported that Albemarle County’s Community Development Department had admitted to destroying documents related to Project Heron.

Since then, we’ve learned that the County failed to file the RM-3 form required by the Library of Virginia prior to destroying those public records.

Last Friday, James Douglas from the County Attorney’s office wrote to Crozet United to explain that there had been an “oversight in completing the form and filing it”. To correct the error, the County retroactively filed an RM-3 form with the Library of Virginia as shown below.

The County’s destruction of the Project Heron documents is very unique

We contacted the Library of Virginia and spoke with one of their Records Management Analysts to see how consistent the Project Heron “document dump” was with Albemarle County’s previous history of destroying documents.

First, we looked into Albemarle County’s use of the series code #010082 to justify the destruction of project documentation files related to Project Heron. We wondered how often Albemarle County had used this code in the past.

According to the Library of Virginia’s records, there are no uses of the series #010082 by anyone in Albemarle County at least since July 1, 2010.

Second, we noted that, according to the RM-3 form above, Albemarle County reported that it had only destroyed approximately 0.25 cubic feet of Project Heron documents. We wondered how frequently Albemarle County’s Community Development Department (CDD) actually destroys documents and how large those typical “document dumps” have been.

According to the Library of Virginia’s online records, there are six recorded instances where Albemarle County’s CDD has reported that it destroyed documents since 2021. Those instances are shown below.

As shown in the image above, the Community Development Department typically destroys very large quantities of building records, including inspection and permit files. The volume of documents destroyed in a typical batch ranges from 10-53 cubic feet, much larger than the 0.25 cubic feet it destroyed in the Project Heron batch.

Finally, we reviewed the Library of Virginia’s procedure for completing an RM-3 form to see if those protocols were followed by Albemarle County. One of those procedures describes the role and responsibility of the RM-3 “Approving Official” as the person “who will know whether there is a hold (litigation, audit, FOIA, request, investigation, etc.) in place or be reasonably aware of one forthcoming, that would require the continued retention of these records. This person’s approval of the form will affirm that no holds are in place or are reasonably anticipated.”

We wondered whether the “Approving Official” should have been reasonably aware of a FOIA request for Project Heron records that was submitted to the County on April 30th of this year.

Unfortunately, since the County failed to file the RM-3 form prior to destroying the Project Heron records, we cannot accurately determine when the records were destroyed.

Crozet United has written to several County officials to request answers to two basic and critically important follow up questions, which are shown in the box below:

At publication time, no one in the County had responded to our request. We will provide an update on this situation in next week’s issue.