01/24/1977 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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(Attachment) Mayor's Comments - Read at Council Meeting, January 2d_, 1977 At our January 3 Organizational Meeting I asked Council to accept the re-appointment of Larry Byrnes. My records show he was eventually confirmed that evening. As I'm sure Council knows, the Mayor and others (including some Councilmen) are very much opposed to changing.la~ firms at this time. This would turn out to be a very costly process and in my opinion we would be doing an injustice to the people of our town. We are pre- sently deeply involved in some 6 cases of litigation - 3 in the Appeals Courts. Our present Law Firm has spent endless hours on these cases - have the experts to handle same and I remain optimistic as to the final outcome of this litigation. We have won several important cases. We are fortunate in having a highly reputable Law Firm in our employ -.'a firm that has been active for over 100 years and whose services to this Village have been excellent. For some 5 years - since Arnold EdeTman's retirement - the staff of Spieth,Bell,McCurdy & Newell have more than adequately handled our legal problems. Some of you may recall - at the time of Edelman's retirement - we interviewed 3 or 4 or 5 lawyers (including Mr. Grogan). Other than for a transition period - when some pending litigation was passed on to the firm of Ca1fe,Halter, Calfee, & Griswold - Mr. Byrnes was selected as our Law Director and confirmed by Council. I have attempted to clearly identify the true objections to re-appointing Byrnes. Those matters introduced by Mr. Grogan at our last executive meeting - later listed in the news media - appear to be the negative grounds on which some Council members have based their judgement. And that had to do with an hourly rate change requested by Mr. Byrnes, a rate lower than - what other experts in the field of law are presently charging - despite some figures:pre- sented by Grogan as charged by individual lawyers - not affiliated with some of the larger firms. I will venture to say that nobody in this room is any more interested than I in keeping our costs to a minimum. At the same time - we are all cognizant of rate increases today. I am personally interested in seeing this municipality defended by experts in their field - that we continue to defend those standards sought by the majority of our con- stituents. I ask, again that you all look at the situation in the overall and that the price tag be considered second to the quality and creditability and expertice we are buying on behalf of the Village. Bob Beebe, Mayor