Attorney fees are riding a rocket in Bradenton Beach. And they can only go up with each additional lawsuit filed against the city and the ongoing forfeiture proposed by commissioners.
Just over a month into the 2014-15 fiscal year, Bradenton Beach expended nearly a third of its annual attorney fees budget.
Attorney fees for the month of October amounted to $30,781, with additional payments of $7,437 to Blalock Walters, P.A., approved by the city commission Nov. 6.
The 2014-15 fiscal year, which runs October through September 2015, has $89,000 budgeted for attorney fees and an additional $5,000 for attorney fees related to pier renovations.
The annual Bradenton Beach city budget for attorney fees was $50,500 in fiscal year 2012-13 and $51,300 in fiscal year 2013-14, according to The Islander’s analysis of city budgets.
At a July 17 commission meeting, city attorney Ricinda Perry presented a resolution to the commission that amended the 2013-14 budget, raising attorney fees to $112,300. The motion was passed 4-1, with Mayor Bill Shearon voting “no.”
Another amendment to the fiscal year 2013-14 budget amounted to a reduction in attorney costs of $2,841, leaving the attorney budget at $109,459.
But the $61,000 increase wasn’t enough to keep the city from going over budget. Attorney expenses totaled $110,283 by Sept. 30.
The $61,000 budget increase represented a two-year trend in city attorney expenditures. In fiscal year 2012-13, Bradenton Beach’s attorney fees came in at $56,113 — over the $50,500 budgeted for attorneys — according to budget documents obtained from city treasurer Sheila Dalton.
The issue has not gone unnoticed with city leaders. At a Nov. 6 city commission meeting, Shearon said that the city has given attorneys carte blanche to spend whatever amount of time and money they feel necessary to complete work assigned by commissioners and the mayor. Shearon said that there’s no control and that he is open to suggestions from the commission on how to curb the rising costs.
According to Shearon, before this commission, all requests for attorney business passed through the mayor’s office, giving a measure of control to expenditures. He noted that this commission opted to allow commissioners and the mayor the right to assign work to both other appointed and the city attorney.
Shearon admitted that the last two months of attorneys’ fees have been extensive and expensive for the city in recent months.
Commissioner Jack Clarke expressed concern that more than $10,000 of the city’s non-budgeted attorney fees has come from public records requests. Clarke said citizens are within their rights to make public records requests, but the amount being spent to fulfill them is excessive.
Commissioner Jan Vosburgh said she thinks it’s a big waste of money to the city.
Commissioner Janie Robertson weighed in on the issue, saying that when she was faced with public records requests, she fulfilled them herself rather than turning the issue over to the attorney. According to Robertson, this did not take much of her time and cost the city a minimal amount of money.
Shearon stated that while the commission has had discussions on the issue of mounting attorney fees, no solutions have been put forth.
Bradenton Beach isn’t the only island city that has faced increases in attorney bills.
Holmes Beach increased its annual budget for attorneys’ fees from $100,000 in fiscal year 2011-12 to $156,000 in fiscal year 2014-15, according to budgets provided by city treasurer Lori Hill. For the past three years, city attorney fees have exceeded the budgeted amount in Holmes Beach.
In Anna Maria, attorney fees have been on a downward trend. In fiscal year 2011-12, the city spent $107,053 on attorney fees, nearly twice the $57,000 budget. The next year saw a drop to $75,539, under the 2012-13 budget of $91,000. The downward trend continued with the fiscal year 2013-14 budgeted at $67,000, with spending of $57,411, according to city treasurer Maggie Martinez.
The Anna Maria attorney fee budget for fiscal year 2014-15 dropped to $60,000.
The issue of attorney fees in Bradenton Beach is not over, as public records requests and lawsuits continue in the city.
One thing the mayor and city commissioners agreed on at the Nov. 6 meeting is that some control needs to be implemented to curb spiraling costs.