AgdaPkt 2011-02-07 - Laserfiche WebLink

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6.3C REPORT Paye 1 To the Honorable Mayor and City Council From the City Manager February 7, 2011 SUBJECT Restructuring of the City Attorney's Department. RECOMMENDATION Approve by resolution the restructuring of the City Attorney's Department and the establishment of the Deputy City Attorney classification. BACKGROUND The City Attorney's Department provides legal representation and advice so that the City may lawfully attain its goals while minimizing risk to the City. This is accomplished by providing prompt and thoughtful legal analysis and work product in various areas of the law to support the City's goals and work efforts. The Department's client is the City itself acting through its highest authorized officer or body overseeing a particular subject area or matter. Accordingly, the City Attorney's Department provides legal service to the City Council, to Boards and Commissions, to the City Manager, and to 12 City Departments. This work is primarily accomplished by two lawyers -- the City Attorney and an Assistant City Attorney, and two administrative personnel a Secretary and an Administrative Assistant. In addition, the City Attorney's Department has a part-time contract attorney. An evaluation over the last six months of the Department's delivery of legal services has resulted in a proposed Department reorganization that will involve no increase to the Department's budget. The proposed restructuring is to eliminate the part -time contract attorney and reduce the Administrative Assistant from full -time to part-time. These resources will be redeployed to fund a new full -time entry level Deputy City Attorney. The proposed salary range is $7388 -9676 per month. The Deputy City Attorney would have benefits as established in the Summary of Benefits for Executive Management, except that in -lieu hours would be reduced from 160 hours to 80 hours for this position and reduced from 160 hours to 120 hours for any future recruitments for the Assistant City Attorney position. The City will benefit from the reorganization in several ways. The Department will be able to accomplish more attorney -level work, adding value and service to the City. In addition, the new structure will allow the Deputy City Attorney to be cross - trained in land use and planning. The City's planning function is the greatest draw on legal resources, so every attorney within the Department needs to be able to provide service in this area. Such cross - training is not possible under the current structure due to the less than full -time hours of the contract attorney position. The Administrative Assistant function is to provide effective internal Department support work. The Department recently agreed to share the Assistant with another city for 3 -6 months on a part -time basis. This provides valuable cross - training to the incumbent, benefits both organizations, and allows the City Attorney's Department to realize budgetary savings. When the shared service arrangement ends, the City Attorney's Department will partner with the Human Resources Department to evaluate whether additional shared service opportunities exist outside or within the organization. If they do not, the Administrative Assistant position will be formally reduced from full -time (1.0 FTE) to part-time (0.5 FTE).