Title
Staff Report for Amendment of Legal Services Agreement with Meyers Nave
Staffreport
SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Staff requests that the City Council consider Meyers Nave's request for an Amendment and one-year extension of its Agreement to provide legal services for the City from July 1, 2014 through June 30, 2015.
BACKGROUND
The City of San Leandro entered into a Professional Services Agreement with Steven R. Meyers in 1986, to provide contract legal services to the City and its agencies, and to perform the functions, duties and responsibilities of the City Attorney, as set forth in the City's Charter. In 2000, Amendment No. 1 assigned the Professional Services Agreement to Meyers Nave, a professional corporation. Amendment No. 2 and Amendment No. 3 were approved in 2005 and 2008, respectively. The above contracts were structured such that a fixed monthly retainer was provided to Meyers Nave in exchange for the firm's legal services.
In February 2013, the City of San Leandro contracted with Municipal Resource Group, LLC ("MRC") to complete an analysis of the City's legal services agreement framework. As part of this analysis, MRC completed an extensive review of the costs associated with the agreement, as well as a benchmark survey of nine other jurisdictions in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, including the cities of Alameda, Berkeley, Fremont, Hayward, Livermore, Pleasanton, Union City, Pittsburg, and Richmond.
Based upon the results of this analysis, MRC provided three possible options for the City Council's consideration:
1) Continue to Contract for City Attorney services
2) Implement an In-House City Attorney's Office
3) Issue a Request for Proposals for City Attorney Services
The attached MRC report also recommended that if the City Council ultimately proceeded with Option 1, that it should attempt to negotiate into a new agreement that eliminated the flat retainer structure, to be replaced by a fee-for-service arra...
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