NORWICH — One week ahead of a deadline to respond, the Selectboard voted Wednesday to avoid fighting a Public Records Act lawsuit by giving a petitioner all the records he had requested, unredacted and free of charge.

“We hope that this might bring the end to the legal case against us,” Selectboard Chair Kimo Griggs said at the meeting.

Back in May, Norwich resident Christopher Katucki, a retired lawyer, filed a lawsuit with the Vermont Supreme Court over a slew of what he considered excessively redacted emails provided by Town Manager Brennan Duffy, plus a copying fee of nearly $550.

The Norwich Selectboard met Wednesday to decide how to move forward, with nine days to respond to Katucki’s claims: that communications between public officials were improperly redacted, and that the fee for obtaining those documents was not legal.

Early in that meeting, Selectboard Vice Chair Brendan Classon said that, despite several months of considering the issue, the decision itself can be simplified to a single question.

“Do we honor the right of a citizen, resident and taxpayer of our town to satisfy a reasonable and lawful request for public documents, or do we, by some means or another, deny that right?” Classon said.

Due to ALS, known as Lou Gehrig’s disease — a progressive neurodegenerative condition — Katucki is unable to review records in person at Town Hall, which he could do free of charge.

Instead, he needs digital access, and communicated to Duffy that he takes notes by screenshotting pages, as described in the complaint.

But there’s a fee associated with having copies of records instead of just viewing them, according to the Secretary of State’s Uniform Charges Schedule.

Duffy agreed to provide the documents digitally provided that Katucki not share or publish them without paying a $550 fee, broken down by staff time and pay — primarily 16 hours of work by Duffy at $34 per hour.

“You can’t just go and make up your own idea of what somebody should pay in fees,” resident John Carroll said in a public comment session. He added that Norwich has not adopted its own public records policy.

Katucki had previously sued Norwich over town-appointed groups holding closed meetings and not keeping minutes. That three-year legal battle ended with a settlement by the town, which spent roughly $100,000 in legal fees.

More recently, Katucki filed a complaint over an open meeting law violation — a quorum of the Selectboard participated in undisclosed email exchanges in January.

The town admitted to wrongdoing for communicating without proper warning on April 22 and initiated the cures requested by Katucki, namely to adopt Selectboard communications policies that help them avoid unwarned quorums.

On Feb. 2, Katucki requested all written communications among or between Selectboard members during January of this year, and from the town manager to any Selectboard member during the same period.

At a meeting May 27, Selectboard members expressed concern that attorney Beriah Smith had applied all redactions possible to about 300 pages of emails, as instructed by Duffy, before providing them to Katucki.

Duffy had denied an administrative appeal for the missing details.

Smith noted that Vermont state law lists over 40 circumstances allowing municipalities to withhold public records, but the Selectboard questioned the validity of the redactions she made.

Former Selectboard member Pamela Smith noted Katucki was in a rare situation, and expressed disapproval over the town’s strong efforts to charge a fee for the records Katucki wanted to see.

“How many people in this town have ALS that you’re going to have to worry about whether you have to make some special accommodation for them for a public records request?” Smith asked.

Mary Layton urged the town to adopt a policy for public records requests, and expressed concerns about similar-sized requests tying up town employees’ time.

“Part of the reason to have a good policy is to sort of cut down on that happening in the first place,” Layton said.

After a 90-minute closed-door session, the Selectboard voted unanimously to authorize Smith and Duffy to provide the requested documents “unredacted at no cost without restrictions,” said Griggs, and to pursue a settlement of the lawsuit and to defend it to the extent necessary.

Reached by email Thursday morning, Katucki said he had not yet been made aware of the decision.

Griggs said the town is consistently working to improve its procedures, and this situation did not arise from bad intention.

“I believe that everyone did as they thought they should do,” Griggs said of the original response to Katucki’s request.