By Tracy Ouellette
SLN Staff
The East Troy Village Board listened to presentations by three law firms interested in taking over the village’s municipal and prosecution legal needs at the Dec. 18 meeting.
The village’s previous attorney, Linda Gray, submitted her verbal resignation on Oct. 12 and a written resignation on Oct. 16, Village Administrator Eileen Suhm said.
The Village Board voted Oct. 12 to use the law firm of Pruitt, Ekes and Geary S.C., out of Racine, as an interim village attorney as administration began the process of requesting proposals from area law firms.
“We chose him because we had an existing relationship with Attorney Pruitt because he was used as special council on development issues and we knew him,” Suhm said Wednesday morning.
The request for proposal was sent out Oct. 24 and the village received eight responses, Suhm said at the meeting. The village department heads then reviewed the eight requests and five were chosen to interview.
From those interviews, three firms were recommended by the department heads to give presentations to the Village Board at the Dec. 18 meeting.
The village is looking for municipal and prosecution attorney services and in Suhm’s memo to the board about the law firms, she said it was not unusual for a municipality to have separate firms provide those services.
Three of the firms were applying for the municipal services role. They were: Arenz, Molter, Macy, Riffle and Larson S.C. of Waukesha; Stafford Rosenbaum LLP of Madison and Milwaukee; and Pruitt, Ekes and Geary S.C.
Arenz, Molter, Macy, Riffle and Larson was also applying for the prosecution services role in the village; it was the only firm that offered both services. Finally, Hippenmeyer, Reilly, Blum, Schmitzer, Fabian and English, S.C. was only applying for the prosecution services role.
For more on the attorney options, see the Dec. 27 edition of the East Troy Times.
