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Department Approval: REQUEST FOR COUNCIL ACTION Manager Approved: .�.E=�-� � �� It�: Council Consideration of City Attorney Appointments Introduction State law provides as follows about the appointment of a city attorney: Date: 10/14/02 Item: IX. A. Organizational Business Date: 9/23/2002 Item �#: IX. B. Agenda Section: Organizational Business Subd. 3. Appointment of personnel. The city manager shall appoint upon the basis of inerit and fitness and subject to applicable civil service provisions and, except as herein provided, remove the clerk, all heads of departments, and all subordinate officers and employees; but the appointment of the attorney shall be subject to the approval of the council. MSR 412.65 1.3. Hence, the city manager appoints the city attorney "subject to approval of the council." The City Council directed staff to issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) to metro law firms for the following legal services: City Attorney, City Prosecutor, Development Attorney, Bond Counsel. Staff prepared and distributed an RFP to approximately 64 law firms. Seventeen Metro area law firms submitted proposals. Some law firms offered to provide one type of legal service. Others offered to provide two or three types of legal service. This Request for Council Action (RCA) deals only with City Attorney services. The ne�t two RCA's from the Police Department and Community Development staff deal with City Prosecutor services and Development Attorney services, respectively. Our Finance Director is working on the Bond Counsel process. Recommendation The Council asked staff to describe in a table format our evaluation of the law firms we interviewed. That table follows. The evaluations in the table are based on the written proposals submitted by the law firms and the oral interviews of the firms held on Wednesday, August 14, 2002. The interviews were conducted by a panel consisting of myself, Parks & Recreation Director Lonnie Brokke, Human Resources Manager pona Bacon, Communications Specialist Carolyn Curti, and City Planner Thomas Paschke. (Note: Mayor Kysylyczyn attended and monitored all four city attorney interviews; Acting Mayor Tom Kough did the same for the Jensen Bell interview.) A score of "5" from the panel reflects excellence.