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Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Council <br />Tuesday, January 21, 2020 <br />Page 7 <br />Mayor Bodnar congratulated the Committee and Board members. We look forward to having <br />you on board and participating and working with you. If you would like to at this point find your <br />oath in the back of the room and sign it and then we are going to take a little break right now and <br />have some cookies. <br />Council took a break for refreshments at 7:15 p.m. <br />Council reconvened at 7:30 p.m. <br />Council President Schutt stated, congratulations everybody. Thank you for volunteering. Mayor <br />Bodnar, did you have anything else to add? <br />Mayor Bodnar stated, at the Special Meeting of Council on January 6th, Council voted <br />unanimously to approve a Resolution reappointing the Law Director Anthony Coyne for a <br />second two-year term. I was prepared that evening to address any questions regarding the <br />Resolution and to review with Council the changes that were made from the original agreement. <br />No questions were raised at the meeting and as we had a lot of other items on the agenda that <br />evening, I did not review the changes. I understanding that Councilman Meyers has made a <br />request to Council that the changes be specifically addressed so I would like to just take a couple <br />minutes tonight and compare the two Agreements. <br />The terms of payment for the Law Director are set up in two parts. There's an annual retainer <br />and that covers your basic services. There's also an hourly fee. We pay an hourly rate for <br />services that are over and above the retainer agreement. Under the old Resolution that was done <br />two years ago for a two-year term, the annual retainer was $25,000. Under the new Agreement <br />that was negotiated between the Administration and Mr. Coyne, that included a $30,000 retainer <br />so that's an increase in the retainer of about $416 per month. We also negotiated that that <br />retainer would include more services than under the prior Resolution and Agreement. The <br />retainer now includes all communication that's relative to any representation covered under the <br />retainer. Under the prior Agreement, those communications were not included as part of the <br />retainer. It could be billed separately at the hourly rate. <br />Secondly, under the prior Resolution, the retainer covered attendance at Council and Caucus, <br />attendance at Planning and Zoning plus four additional board, committee or commission <br />meetings a month. We were not using up those four additional board, committee or commission <br />meetings each month so we negotiated under the new Agreement rather than those four <br />additional meetings, the additional meetings would be two, but we would also include in that two <br />department head meetings. Those we will use up and those will save us some money in the long <br />run <br />Finally, under the previous Resolution, the hourly rate for services outside the retainer was $175 <br />an hour. Under the new Resolution, the rate would be $190 an hour for senior attorneys which <br />you might think of as partners and $175 an hour for associates. Ms. Weber is an associate and <br />she does quite a bit of our legal work. So, although we will see a small increase in hourly billing <br />for some of the work, a great deal of work that's done for Village will still be billed at $175 per <br />hour. I want to assure everyone that we did our homework. In fact, Mr. Wynne researched what <br />