Belleville City Council hires two new law firms to represent city

On Monday, July 20, at a regular meeting via Zoom, the Belleville City Council voted unanimously to hire two new law firms to represent the city.
Interim City Manager Tracey Schultz Kobylarz had put together a committee with the police chief, fire chief, DPS director and clerk to review the proposals and they unanimously recommended the firms.
As of Aug. 1, Shifman, Fournier of Bingham Farms will be the labor attorney and Cummings, McClorey, Davis and Acho of Livonia will handle all other municipal legal services.
City Manager Kobylarz said Shifman, Fournier was selected for personnel/labor issues. She said it is a smaller firm with a boutique style.
She said the recommendations were unanimous from all department heads.
Councilman Ken Voigt said he has worked with Cummings, McClorey and they’re a good firm, but he is not familiar with the other firm.
Councilman Tom Fielder said he wanted to be sure the council was comfortable with who they would send to court as city prosecutor.
“I would like to see who they use to cover the courts,” said Police Chief Dave Robinson. “I would love to sit down and talk to them about it.”
He said Cummings McClorey has an extremely good reputation in law enforcement and even those municipalities with their own attorney sometimes use them to handle some of the more complicated cases.
“I’ve worked with these firms and have no problem with them,” said Mayor Kerreen Conley.
Shifman Fournier’s hourly rates are $145 per hour and Cummings McClorey charges $150 an hour.
The city went out for proposals after the interim city manager came on board because the city hadn’t looked at its contracts for a while. Current city attorney Steve Hitchcock did not submit a proposal because he said he did not know the city was seeking proposals.
In other action at the 32-minute meeting, the council:
• Heard Mayor Conley thank Randy Brown’s father, Doug Brown, for putting all the information from the cemetery into an Excel spreadsheet. She also thanked a mother and daughter team that planted flowers outside city hall. She also thanked City Manager Kobylarz for working with Ford Motor Company on plans for the commercial they were shooting around the Belleville Bridge on Main Street last Friday. Ford compensated the city and that money has been put aside for now. She said, maybe, they could put some in the capital improvement fund and carve out some for employee recognition, which could be done because it is not tax funds. They won’t do this in the middle of COVID, she said. Kobylarz said the commercial for Ford’s autonomous vehicle, is expected to be aired sometime this winter, perhaps January;
• Heard Fire Chief Brian Loranger ask for the pedestrian crossing sign to be put back up on Main at Fourth Street. He said with the farmers’ market so popular it is really needed. Earlier that afternoon he saw a person standing in the middle of the street waiting for traffic to clear to cross because traffic wasn’t stopping for pedestrians. Nobody seemed to know where the sign is. Councilman Fielder, who had originally asked for the sign, said it wasn’t at the museum. He said it had taken a couple of hits and wasn’t looking good. He said the Downtown Development Authority is planning an enhanced, push-button crosswalk there when the upgrades to Fourth Street are done;
• Heard Michael Renaud say he read about Van Buren Township Supervisor McNamara arranging for bonuses for first responders and asked if the city couldn’t do that, too. Mayor Conley said the hazard pay and reimbursement for expenses is in the pipeline and the city has applied. It’s a first-come, first-served funding through the CARES Act;
• Heard Patricia Myles of Ypsilanti Township ask for a place on an upcoming agenda to discuss removal of the LaSalle statue at Victory Park. She said she hoped Belleville would stop glorifying this person who took possession of 530 million acres of land from the indigenous people for the King of France. Greg Olszta said he was with Myles and he, too, was calling for removal of the statue of this white man responsible for torture and thievery, who wasn’t the image you’d want to glorify;
• Heard Mayor Pro Tem Jesse Marcotte speak about the power outage from Sunday’s storm. He said last fall DTE said they would do things to improve service. He said he has lost power six times this year and he would like to have DTE attend a meeting to explain what they are doing. Mayor Conley said when they were having power problems on her side of town, DTE put in another power station. She said she will get someone from DTE to join a future meeting;
• Heard Chief Loranger ask if they have heard any dates for the DORA district from the state. Kobylarz said they hadn’t but Belleville was the first city in the state that submitted all the paperwork;
• Heard Voigt say the farmers’ market has become a pretty nice market and the Central Business Community is doing a good job with it. He said Steve Jones is acting as a DJ and playing tunes at Egan’s outside area and last Wednesday every table was filled. Also, he said, the Blues Festival at Belleville High School parking area on Saturday will be a great event;
• Read in a report from Kobylarz that the Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) has retracted the violation issued to the city on Oct. 11, 2019 for the Disinfection Byproduct (DBP) reports. DBP data will be collected again by Aug. 31 and reported to EGLE within ten days of the monitoring period, she wrote; and
• Read in Kobylarz’s report that initial proposals have been exchanged between the Michigan Association of Fire Fighters and the city.