Report to Mayor and City Council
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Discussion
SUBJECT:
Title
APPROVE CONTRACT AMENDMENT NO. 1 WITH HARRIS & ASSOCIATES FOR EMPLOYEE RELATIONS INVESTIGATION (CITY COUNCIL)
Body
I. SUMMARY
The City has utilized various third-party attorneys and investigators for employee investigations and other matters in the past. Because several investigations were required starting in the summer of 2019 that were submitted to Human Resources and others that were submitted to the City Council anonymously. Because there were no on-call investigators, Staff sought the services of an attorney investigator under the City Manager's contract authority. Several of the investigators recommended by the City Attorney's Office or senior staff in other cities turned down the opportunity saying they were unwilling to indemnify the City as required in our professional services agreement and/or were not available to take on additional cases.
Staff was able to secure two external third-party attorney investigators under the City Manager's contract authority to address needs that required immediate attention. The earliest of these two contracts (with Harris and Associates) was not fully executed until December 2019 (per Exhibit No. 1 as presented at the January 14, 2020 City Council meeting) with work initiated on January 15, 2020; and the second one was executed in February 2020. Both investigators have received assignments.
Harris and Associates (Harris) has been assigned four investigations (one has required more effort than expected and is partially complete; the other three are almost complete). It would be inefficient to switch to another attorney investigator at this time. Staff is requesting approval of Amendment No. 1 to the Harris contract. The Amendment allows the attorney to continue with the current investigations. Based upon the time and research required, certain work has caused Harris to reach the maximum contract amount. The Amendment does n...
Click here for full text