By Linda Taaffe

The Los Altos City Council doubled its annual legal budget this month to fund a higher-than-usual number of lawsuits filed against the city over the past 18 months. City officials transferred $106,000 from the unreserved fund to supplement the $101,094 budgeted for attorney fees during the 2001-02 fiscal year.

Over the past 18 months the city has been involved in five high-profile civil lawsuits, city attorney Marc Hynes said. The issues surrounding each suit all started years earlier but didn’t get to the litigation stage until recently, he said.

The number of civil cases is a significant jump from the previous year, when the city reported only the typical zoning and code enforcement lawsuits that include such matters as barking dogs and blighted properties.

“Anytime you have litigation you can expect to make budget adjustments,” said Assistant City Manager Starla Jerome-Robinson. “We may go some years without going to court. Other years we have more (cases).”

Jerome-Robinson attributed the higher expenses to litigation issues as well as labor negotiations and other personnel matters. A big chunk of the money was needed to defend the city against a pending lawsuit that the Society of St. Vincent de Paul filed earlier this year challenging the rights of day workers under current Los Altos city law, she said. The case is still in court.

Hynes said code enforcement cases typically cost the city less than $5,000 each. The cost of civil cases depends on how much the plaintiff wants to spend and do, he added.

Hynes said that in the past the city had no set legal budget. It basically paid for legal expenses as they came up.

“Setting a budget is an educated guess at best,” Hynes said. “It’s hard to come up with. There’s a number of unknowns.”

The city is currently in litigation with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul; the Rosita Neighborhood Coalition, a group of residents opposing the pool complex planned for Rosita Park; A Ranchita resident who doesn’t want to move his solar panels; the garbage company for rebates; and a case that stems from a police training in San Jose where a Palo Alto officer was accidentally shot.

Hynes estimated that about 75 percent of the city’s civil cases are settled out of court.