Warsaw Council Gives 1st Nod Allowing For Its Own Attorney
Warsaw Council Gives 1st Nod Allowing For Its Own Attorney
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David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
Warsaw Council Gives 1st Nod Allowing For Its Own AttorneyOn first reading Monday, the Warsaw Common Council approved an ordinance authorizing the council to contract for an attorney to provide independent legal advice to the council by a vote of 6-1.
The ordinance will be brought up for second reading at the council’s April 2 meeting.
The issue of the council having access to its own attorney – other than the city attorney who reports to the mayor – has been studied since early 2019 when there was an issue with the chief of police and a private citizen. While no action was taken against the chief, two police officers were suspended for 10 days for their actions which included providing police video to two city councilmen.
In presenting the ordinance, Mayor Joe Thallemer said it was the ordinance “that would create the procedures for accessing the independent legal counsel for the common council. I know our attorney (Scott Reust) has worked hard on this with the council. I think this lays out pretty much what was agreed upon in past discussions.”
He said the ordinance “allows for this to happen, it sets the procedures” but the actual contracting with an attorney would be a contract that would have to be approved by the Board of Public Works and Safety and follow ordinances.
Reust said there was a lot of work put into the ordinance in 2019 with the original team of Councilmen Diane Quance and Mike Klondaris and former Councilman Ron Shoemaker. “I think there’s been a lot of thought go into this. They worked very hard ... it’s breaking new ground for Tier 3 cities, if they choose to hire someone at some point. But I think this is a very good start on procedures that should be used to ensure that if an attorney is employed, it’s employed for the legislative body as a whole by a majority vote,” Reust said.
He said this ordinance supersedes the previous ordinance that the council approved.
Councilman Jeff Grose, who has expressed his concerns about the council having its own legal counsel, said he read it Monday afternoon and he was more comfortable with it. However, he challenged the board to consider changing the ordinance so that it took a supermajority of the council to employ legal counsel instead of just a majority.
Klondaris said the council didn’t need a supermajority for anything else so he didn’t see why the attorney needed one. Councilwoman Cindy Dobbins said she felt comfortable with a regular majority. Josh Finch, councilman, said a majority was good for him.
Grose was the sole councilman voting against the ordinance on first reading.
On first and second reading, the council approved an ordinance amending the 2020 salary ordinance, 2020 police salary ordinance and the 2020 fire salary ordinance.
Thallemer said, “This is an example of a tool we may need during this upcoming difficult times” with the coronavirus pandemic. “What it does is, it allows for an employee to be paid by working at home. This is not a blanket for everyone to work at home. All this is, is it gives us the ability to legally pay someone for working at home if they are chosen or request and have the ability to work at home. At this point, we have no employees that are working at home, nor at this point do we plan on any employees working at home. However, certainly circumstances can change, and we are not allowed to pay for someone to work at home without an amendment to the salary ordinance, per state statute.”
Reust said his concern with the ordinance was that it stated emergency stay-home pay may not exceed two weeks. He suggested the council expand that because if it was left at two weeks, the council would have to have a meeting every two weeks in an emergency situation to give their approval.
“I know I wrote the thing, but it seems a little short-sighted now considering how long the CDC may recommend different things,” Reust said.
Human Resource Director Jennifer Whitaker said the ordinance is a great idea for when and if it is needed, but she was “anxiously awaiting” what the U.S. House has already passed in conjunction with the emergency Family Medical Leave Act. Unless it is tweaked, she said employers are going to have to pay employees at least two-thirds of their wages after a two-week waiting period. “So if this two weeks covers two weeks, then we are still going to be paying the employees, and those conditions are less restrictive than these under that potential new emergency FMLA law that is going to hopefully be passed.”
She said extending the ordinance to more than two weeks may be unnecessary because there may be other laws that will go into effect to help the city out.
Thallemer said if the city has an employee that can actually do their work at home, without any regard to FMLA, they’d just be continuing their work without worrying about other issues. Whitaker said there’d be a very limited number of employees who would have a need to work at home.
Whitaker advocated for postponing any action on the ordinance.
Councilwoman Diane Quance said 30 days might be one idea instead of two weeks. Reust said 30 days would be appropriate.
After further discussion on the pros and cons of the ordinance and a limited number of certain city employees working from home, the council approved the ordinance on first and second reading. It was amended to state that emergency stay-at-home pay may not exceed 60 calendar days without approval of the majority of the common council.
In other business, the city council approved:
• An amendment to the 10-year tax abatement previously approved for 802 Center LP on real property improvements at 802 E. Center St. Roughly $13.8 million will be spent to construct a new 73-unit senior housing facility. The original approval had the project being completed in 2020, but the amended application will extend the completion date until July 2021.
• Continuing tax abatements for West Hill Development LLC. The abatements are for Patrick Industries, 1445 Polk Drive, fifth year of abatement; Patrick Industries, same address, first year of abatement; Banner Medical, 1295 Polk Drive, fifth year of abatement; Patrick Industries Inc., 1445 Polk Drive, second year of abatement; and for a shell building at 1195 Polk Drive, West Hill Investment Group, first year of abatement.
