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Let me do job as I see fit, attorney urges city staff
By ANNE LINDBERG, Times Staff Writer PINELLAS PARK -- City staff members no longer will monitor the status of Pinellas Park's legal work after receiving a letter from the city attorney saying it was none of their business. City Clerk Kathy Witherington set up the review system last spring after city employees complained about the time it took to get legal work done. The information was compiled into weekly status reports, with the goal of prioritizing the most important work. But Witherington discontinued the system after officials received an Aug. 13 letter from City Attorney Ed Foreman saying it was not the city's job to decide what was important or to set deadlines. "Please be advised that there are no deadlines on legal work forwarded to this office," Foreman wrote. "Legal work will be forwarded back to the city when we are satisfied that it is complete, thorough and protects the city's best interest. "We will prioritize the legal work in terms of importance, and if somebody has an emergency or a matter of great importance, we will drop whatever we are doing to get it done whether it appears on some list or not and work with that member of staff until that project is completed." This is the way things have worked for the past 28 years, Foreman wrote. Witherington will continue to keep track of items sent to the attorney's office, Pinellas Park spokesman Tim Caddell said. The major change, he said, is that, except for emergencies, she no longer will tell Foreman which work should be handled first and will not tell him how long the attorney has to do the work. "She felt it was no longer a productive exercise," Caddell said of Witherington's system. In the letter, Foreman also complained about the time Pinellas Park had given him to approve bid documents for removal of brush and vegetation from a pond in the Pinebrook subdivision. The city sent the documents to Foreman's office on Aug. 6 and wanted an answer by Aug. 14. "I have now come into the office on the morning of Aug. 13, 2002 and I am told that these must be returned to the city today," Foreman wrote. "If you will do the simple math, you will see that gives us four working days to return these items." Despite the apparently short time, Foreman did study and approve the documents. "We are glad to solve any problems or help meet any deadlines whenever we are able," he wrote. Foreman and city officials have sparred recently about this issue. Gary Moskaluk, the city's debt collection specialist, wrote a memo in August that said delays in the attorney's office had cost taxpayers money and left uncollected thousands of dollars owed to Pinellas Park. Moskaluk said he had sent five or six foreclosures to Foreman's office and that no work had been done. Foreman denied some of Moskaluk's allegations but agreed his office had been slow about getting some things done. Foreman blamed some of the delay on illness -- five bypasses, an eye problem and a kidney problem -- but said he has caught up most of his city work and had filed cases on most of the foreclosures. Despite the delays, city officials seem content to retain Foreman's services. City Manager Jerry Mudd, speaking through Caddell, said he feels Foreman "continues to be responsive to the needs of the city." Caddell added that the quality of Foreman's work has never been in doubt. It has always been excellent, he said. The council is poised to give Foreman a $14.50-an-hour raise in the upcoming budget year, raising his hourly rate to $152.50. The city's proposed legal budget is $392,500.
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From the Times South Pinellas desks |
