Memorandum

emorandum

To:            Mike Wildgen, City Manager

Debbie Van Saun, Assistant City Manager

From:        David Corliss, Assistant City Manager

Date:         May 13, 2004

Re:              2005 Legal Department Budget Submittal

Critical Issues and Budget Needs

The growth of the community and City services, the complexity of legal issues, and the desire to implement best legal practices are significantly impacting our ability to provide quality legal services for the City.  We are simply not able to provide the level of thoroughness and competence that we desire given time demands.  Our City Code, including a number of provisions that are dated and not in keeping with either current City practices or State law, needs significant legal attention.  We have sought to standardize certain City contracts (e.g. engineering agreements) and we need to devote additional work in this area with our construction and other purchasing agreements.  Best practices for property management (City owned property) remains a continuing concern.   Given the community’s emphasis on innovative and responsive land use regulations, we need to ensure that our legal capabilities match our land use desires.  In short, we are not able to be pro-active, and remain concerned that we are not appropriately responsive.  If there is Commission interest or concern in this area, I recommend the addition of another staff attorney to assist our legal needs.  Given budget concerns I have not included this position in the budget requests, but will respond to Commission guidance.

Our other critical issue is the Municipal Court’s computer system.  The attached program improvement package outlines the need for a new system.  We also outline a mechanism (court costs) to pay for a new system that would enhance productivity, allow for additional web-based features, and allow for eventual electronic data entry versus the current manual methods.