TD City Council Hears Google’s Water Needs Concerns – Columbia Community Connection News Mid-Columbia Region

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Unarmed?

I would like to know from Mayor Mays, who on your board, including you, is legally qualified or specifically trained to handle such a massive legal negotiation as the one our city is in with a global company like Google? How to justify the decision to handle this community-altering negotiation without an outside professional law firm, while Google has a whole team of top-notch lawyers from universities including Yale, Harvard and Berkeley who are handling their side of the negotiation, Sarah McKenna asked

Several people present at the meeting, in fact, stressed that the City Council and the Staff clashed with a team of Google lawyers.

Oregonlive.com produced a story Monday asking the same question.

Mayor Rich Mays responded by saying they have both city and county lawyers to rely on. County and city staff are very capable of negotiating deals right now, he said.

So, you don’t have outside attorneys to help negotiate with a worldwide company, Mckenna retorted.

Others at the meeting said it would be beneficial for the city to get further legal assistance.

Mike Courtney disagreed.

He called it BS and stated that the city’s legal team included Kristen Campbell who attended the State of Michigan and was a member of the Michigan Court of Appeals and Jonathan Kara. Kara, the city attorney, is a graduate of Golden Gate University School of Law. At law school, he worked at the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office on the team responsible for representing the city’s energy interests before the California Public Utilities Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He was later invited again to assist the city’s municipal services department on water rights and land use, according to his profile.

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