Community Corner

City's Legal Costs Need to Be Put Under the Microscope

Mayoral candidate believes more attention needs to be placed on monitoring Civil Service appeals.

The city’s legal costs need to be monitored closely. Fiscal Year 2011’s actual expenses totaled $306,000 or nearly $200,000 over Budget. Of this amount $106.000 was spent on ARA issues. made by former City employees to the Civil Service have resulted in the Civil Service Commission overturning decisions made by the City. This has cost or will cost the City significant amounts of money over and above legal costs when a final accounting of these cases is made.

It is self evident that the City Administration and the Municipal Council needs to determine what went wrong in these cases and recognize that more attention must be made to ensure that Civil Service procedures are properly followed before terminating or disciplining City employees.

The FY2012 Approved Budget includes an amount of $200,000 for legal costs without a plan as to how to reduce these expenses from the FY2011 amount of $306,000. In fact the Council’s Budget Chairman, as reported in the Municipal Council Minutes dated June 23, 2011 indicated that Legal Costs are under budgeted for FY2012. Where will the additional money needed come from?

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 City Ordinances call for a report from the City Solicitor on an annual basis in January of each year. The report due in January 2011 has not yet been submitted. The Mayor’s approach here seems rather casual and indifferent. More openness, transparency and candidness is required on these issues or the City will keep spending unnecessary funds for legal services.

Ronald Churchill                                                                                                                                    Candidate for Mayor of the City of Attleboro

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