Following up on a suggestion made by Greg Rice...

I listened to the later portions of last Tuesday's (6/21) City Commission meeting.  What he referred to in a comment on this blog was the discussion on the city's legal matters (aka lawsuits) - specifically the mounting legal fees and the apparent legal morass in the City Attorney's department.  The discussion surrounded Item 11. G under new business and the segued (intended :) into the City Attorney's report.

It really is worth a listen on the archive City Commission audio.  Click the title of this post and it will take you to the recording of last Tuesday's meeting.  Click on the right side of the screen where the indicator shows the playback's progress.  Go to the 3:56:40 mark.  To hear the whole discussion, you'll have to go to 4:23:16.  If you go farther, you will get into the City Manager's report where she laments about having to deal with other agencies (like fire rescue and PBSO) contractually rather than operationally to control costs.  She still seems to have trouble with the concept.

Anyway, back to the lawsuit matter, Item 11.G just concerned the approval of $85,000 of legal fees for one law firm for the defense of claims related to rather pedestrian legal challenges.  This amount is over and above the $15,000 amount that the staff can approve and below the $100,000 amount that the city's insurance kicks in.  This item ended up being approved with little fanfare, but led to a larger discussion on the status of all the lawsuits being faced by the city.  There was a mention of a total of 159 cases in the system.  The City Attorney says that "our department is struggling" to keep up with the bills.  It seems to be a very complicated process to appropriate various funds from legal fee line items in various enterprise fund budgets, etc.  The City Manager says that the city may have to hire more "in house" attorneys to handle the load.  She mentioned that the total bill to defend the city in the Greater Bay lawsuit will run over $600,000 - there is a similar amount related to the FMPA challenge about the city leaving that contract.  According to the City Attorney, the Greater Bay lawsuit is going to trial in November.

Remember, the legal fees are absent any eventual judgments that may be levied against the city.

Commissioner Golden made the absurd distinction that these legal costs result from actions to defend the city, not legal actions that the city initiated.  It's absurd since many of them are due the cumulative actions of the Commissions on which she has served!

They asked for quarterly reports on fees according to each case that will be put on a spreadsheet.  Apparently, there is a summer intern working on that now - it sounded like a MAJOR task.  We only have this intern for another month.

When listening,  you may want to have some smelling salts and Kleenex handy...