Palm Springs looking into replacing city attorney, keeping city manager
The Palm Springs City Council met in a closed session on Wednesday and decided not to hold an early evaluation for city manager David Ready, but the City Council will start to look into the possibility of replacing part time contracted city attorney Doug Holland with a full time legal staff.
“We continue to have confidence in our City Manager’s ability to run our City and will conduct a full review at the regular time that the Council reviews the City Manager in July. There continues to be ongoing discussion by the City Council on the benefits and costs of hiring an in-house full-time City Attorney versus utilizing the current model of a part-time contract position. We have asked Staff to continue researching this issue and report back to us,” Mayor Robert Moon read in a statement after the closed session.
Last week, Mayor Moon called for reviews of David Ready and Doug Holland. Moon made that announcement at the end of a long council meeting in the early morning hours last Thursday.
The mayor said his call for the meeting wasn’t the result of an FBI raid last year at City Hall, but he’s indicated it may be time for fresh leadership.
David Ready will be having a regularly scheduled review by the city this July.
Dozens of people turned out for public comment before the Palm Springs City Council went in for a closed session to talk about holding evaluations for the city attorney Doug Holland and city manager David Ready.
Last week, Mayor Moon called for reviews of the two men.
“I have known him for 16 years I have worked with him for 16 years he is always available and always accessible and he I consider a champion of our tourism industry,” said Aftab Dada, the general manager of Hilton Palm Springs.
Supporters wore stickers reading ‘I heart David Ready.’ Some of them have business next to the downtown redevelopment project.
“As far as this project goes and I got enough going on between that project and my hotel. With the dust, the dirt and I want it to get done, and I think they shouldn’t make a change now especially since David has been here with everything,” said Vincent Bucci, general manager of Hyatt Palm Springs.
There were critics of Ready that took to the podium. Many of them were still concerned with any connection Ready and Holland might have with the evidence taken during the FBI raid.
“The problems with those contracts is it has the signature of the city attorney and it has the signatures of your city manager and if there is any wrongful conclusion on those contracts, and we don’t know what is going to happen, they would both be implicated as signatories or at least there is the possibility of that,” said Judy Deertrack.
David Ready had a huge outpouring of support, but there were very few people who were behind Doug Holland keeping his position as city attorney.
“All the way around Doug Holland has to go and I feel sorry for David Ready because he is a master of a three ring circus,” said Allen Worthy of Palm Springs.
Doug Holland only works part-time as the city attorney. He’s at City Hall only three days a week.
The City Council has been discussing hiring a full time attorney and paralegal staff for the city. According to Geoff Kors the city would be spending about the same money to have a full time legal staff at City Hall.
