The contract states "Fee arrangements for additional projects will be negotiated and agreed upon by WBBB and the mayor, and approved by council."
According to research of Tony Benedetti, it has been five years since council has been asked to approve the additional work.
At monday's council meeting, Tony made this statement: "council needs to be involved and decide when the law director should be involved. The law director and mayor should say 'we have this issue, do you want to spend some of that $10,000 on this?'"
That's not the way it's done currently. The law director does what she feels is necessary, without the input of council. She does keep them apprised of the activities, but there is no longer any input on council before the hours (money) are spent.
Again, Tony provides that last year $25,000 was spent by the law director, beyond the original contract amount, and it wasn't approved by council- funds were appropriated but none of the activities were approved. There is a difference in appropriating the money and having a particular activity approved to subtract from the funds appropriated. This is another example where council has been taken out of the involvement. If the law director says something is not routine work, it comes from the appropriated funds beyond the contract amount.
In response to this, Jennifer Croghan made the following statement at the July 8 council meeting: "we would say that when you appropriate the funds for the x amount, that's when it is approved." and "when the mayor gets a lawsuit in the door we cant sit around and wait until next month to get together."
The contract also states provisions for "complex litigation," including such things as attendance at hearing before a judge and/or a jury, and appeals. The rates for complex litigation "shall be pre-approved by the Mayor prior to WBBB [law firm] commencing work on any individual matter. The fee arrangement set for the below in "additional projects" shall also apply to "complex litigation."
In other words, ..."and approved by council" applies to complex litigation.
Thus far in 2013, $11,686.64 has been billed to Minerva Park from the law director, beyond the contract amount, for six matters (five separate cases, one was appealed).
I'm uploading the previous contract as best I can do right now, in case you'd like to see what the text says yourself. Most browsers will support clicking on the image to make it large enough to read. Press the "back" button to return to the blog when finished.
These are the expenses beyond contract amounts to date
