With a vacation earlier this month to the Southeast including the wife's first trip to Epcot and a stop at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta was a nice change of pace Things seem to be getting busier at work again so time for the blog has slipped.
Not much has been happening up a city hall unless you want to talk about attorneys.
A legal bill is running up a total for an issue at the police station that I have to believe may be getting close to the amount of money that the attorney was hired to recover. It will be discussed in executive session at next weeks committee meetings. I am glad Alderman Stumpf brought it to light on Monday night.
The main attorney issue is that of the new city attorney who was selected a few weeks back. I missed the meeting (first one in a long time) but I was told it garnered little obstruction at that meeting. On Monday night when discussing the fee schedule for the newly appointed attorney Alderman Hejna presented the council with a enveloped packet detailing complaints from former clients and the Martindale Hubble rating for the new attorney.
Discussion then took place regarding if Tom Adams had a Martindale Hubble rating and what Tom Adams thought of Martindale Hubble ratings. Tom said he had been asked to be interviewed for an "A" rating but declined and that he knew of some attorney's with "A" ratings he would not recommend to anyone.
I don't know how the mayor weigh his decision to select a new attorney. I don't know what the new attorneys Martindale Hubble rating is or if that would even be a credible measure to use. I searched for it online but could not find one for Belsheim & Bruckert, LLC. I spoke with Alderman Oberkfell after the meeting and I asked him how long the new attorney is on board for. The response was for one year as all appointments.
I say let it go for a year and see how they perform. It seems the new attorney has a decent background in municipal law that will keep us out of trouble for a year, then the council can decide if they made a mistake.
The most ironic thing I took from the entire meeting was that Alderman Hejna presented the council with "surprise" material the night of the meeting. I do not know what was in the prepared packet, it may have been greatly valuable information.
The irony is that Alderman Hejna has voiced concern time and time again for information not being given to the alderman on the Friday before a meeting, in order for everyone to have time to review the information. In order to be an effective leader, which is what the all of the alderman should be, you must lead by example in order to obtain desired results.
Communication is the largest problem facing our council.
The state is now five months behind in payments to the city totaling approximately $343,000.
