City of Coachella On Cusp of Hiring New City Attorney
COACHELLA — City Councilors are positioning themselves to hire a new city attorney. They have unanimously decided to Issue a Request for Qualifications for Legal Services.
That’s as far as the majority of the City Council is willing to go at this time. Mayor Frank Figueroa formally put forth a motion last week to terminate Best, Best & Kriger, but he received no support.
The RFQ process includes evaluating responses, and scheduling interviews of qualified firms before the City Council; directing the City Manager to return to the City Council with a short-listed panel of qualified firms for Council interviews and, following those interviews, present a recommendation for the Council’s selection.
The City of Coachella currently retains Best Best & Krieger
LLP (“BBK”) as its contracted City Attorney. BBK is one of the largest municipal law firms in California, with extensive practice areas including land use, public finance, public utilities, and
general municipal law. The City’s legal services agreement with BBK governs the scope of representation, billing rates, and termination provisions.
The City Attorney and the firm serve at the pleasure of the City Council and may be replaced by Council action at any time, consistent with the terms of the legal services agreement.
Talk of terminating services with BB&K has been in the public domain for the past several months for various reasons. Some residents have called for the firm’s ouster for what they perceive is a conflict of interest with Stronghold Power Systems, Inc., the city’s would-be private partner on the now-halted planned city-led utility.
The city attorney is a partner in BB&K.
There have also been complaints about the lack of response to public records requests. The city attorney works in tandem with the city clerk to respond.
Mayor Frank Figueroa
At the June 10 meeting, Mayor Figueroa, who has pledged transparency and accountability, said he had received “several” complaints about delayed Public Records Act requests. He also told Uken Report that he takes these requests for information seriously.
“I just want to know what the ETA is on some of these people’s requests because they’re like, ‘I’ve waited 30, 40 days now, and I just don’t know why it’s taken so long.’ I know that you have a lot … so I’m making sure that we’re able to get to some of those.”
“The last time I checked in …, which was not even a week ago, we were not behind on any Public Records Requests from my understanding,” City Clerk Angela Zapada responded. “So just for clarification, they do come at a first-come, first-serve basis, but the timeline starts once we open the request. So yes, if we received it, and 10 days later you don’t have a response, it is because we haven’t gotten to it yet. So, the request has not yet been opened.”
“Well, thank you for that,” the mayor responded.
