12/15/2009 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 12-15-2009 By way of explanation, as high as Mike had set the baz for others that would follow him, perhaps because of my personal background as a high school and college high jumper, I thought that I could set the bar even higher and clear this new height during for my time as Law Director. I hoped to improve upon the service of Mike Sr. by, as I called it, institutionalizing the City Law Department. I knew that it was unlikely that another Mike Gazeau would come around to serve the City in the future (I obviously was wrong about that), and so my first and foremost task as Law Director was to establish a more permanent structure for the Law Department-in the likely event that less talented, less passionate, less committed law directors headed the Department in the future. Thus, I urged Council in 2002 to create several full-time positions in the Law Department. I did this, not so much to protect competent professional employees-although that is a worthy goal -but more so to protect and preserve institutional memory in the Law Department over the years, so that the wheel would not have to be reinvented every time a new Law Director was elected. I also endeavored to take a number of other steps to institutionalize the North Olmsted Law Department. I urged the city officials to make office space available at City Hali for the Law Department. While space was not available during my first term, in 2006, Mayor O'Grady made such space available to the Department. Again, I thank him for making that permanent space for the Law Department at City Hall a reality. The thought with having permanent law offices at City Hall was that, whenever any City Hall official had a need for legal advice or guidance, there would almost always be a legal presence on site to provide that advice or guidance as soon as possible. Other institutionalizing changes were the following. With the help of IT, a Law Department webpage was created on the City's website. There, helpful information relating to the operations of the Law Department was posted for City officials as well as for the general public to see. Things like a contracts procedure manual-setting forth what procedures must be followed by the City government officials in legally contracting for any good or service; formal legal opinions that address a wide variety of issues of importance to the operations of the City government; annual reports of the Law Department explaining the functions of the Law Department .and providing yearly statistics on things such as ordinances prepared; traffic and criminal prosecutions; monies collected; budget items, etc; and other Law Department information such as explanation of the Fair Housing program and the Department's Victims of Crime program. At my request, City Council also established an RFP process for personal service contracts, and I followed through with that new process during my two terms to contractually secure through a fair and unbiased review the services of outside counsel in several specialized areas of law. The thought was that, if a need arose for such services, it might well azise very quickly, and the City would be best served if outside counsel were immediately available to serve when the legal emergency hit. New contract forms, as the Mayor alluded to, were also created for. different types of city expenditures and posted on the City's V:Drive for all city officials to use. I also attempted to create some new boundaries between the Law Department and other Departments of the City in azeas in which the Law Department had historically provided much guidance, but which seemed to me to not be part of the Charter's central mission of the Law Department-to serve as legal advisor and to represent tl~e City in cQUrt. Thus, during my first term I urged the Administration and Council to seek an outside labor