The Board of Trustees had a special meeting on September 17 in which they hired their first legal counsel.
The Long Beach City College District has had legal counsel advise the Board of Trustees in the past but the board itself has never had its own private counsel.
Based on the last meeting that occurred behind closed doors, the Board of Trustees came to the consensus that they are in need of private counsel.
Five different law firms who sought to become the board’s first legal counsel, gave presentations during the meeting, some of which have provided counsel to the board members and their families in the past.
Law firm Alvarez-Glassman and Colvin gave a disclaimer that they have worked with Trustee Zia, Trustee Ntuk, Board Secretary Hahn and Trustee Otto’s wife in the past.
Ruben Duran from law firm Best Best and Krieger reminded the board that roughly five years ago he gave direction to the board regarding the Brown Act.
Before the board voted, Student Trustee Donell Jones had the floor, despite not having been present for the closed meeting regarding the move to hire legal counsel.
“My concern is that moving forward with private counsel may be a costly endeavor, and it is from my understanding that it may be unnecessary as the school has been around for over 92 years and there’s no precedent of us doing that here,” Jones said.
He commented that he believed the funds could be put to better use by spending them on “student serving or institution community serving interests.”
Trustee Vivian Malauulu then said, “If I were a student trustee I would have said the exact same thing so I appreciate your remarks, I appreciate where you’re coming from, you ask excellent questions from a student perspective,”
“It hasn’t happened yet because it wasn’t needed and I think we’ve come to a place in our tenure as a board where it will probably be necessary,” Malauulu said.
Trustee Sunny Zia also shared her concerns.
“I don’t think it is appropriate for us to hire legal counsel, we have the district’s counsel to draw upon, they work for the district, they’re impartial and I don’t think we should spend tax-payer dollars on it,” Zia said.
Concerns were raised about where the funds would come from for covering the cost of legal counsel.
Marlene Drinkwine, Vice President of Business Services said “There is no current budget for a board counsel so the budget for this expense would essentially come our reserves. So it would be an additional expense that had not been previously been budgeted.”
When voting, the board individually ranked each firm with the highest-ranking firm being Alvarez-Glasman and Colvin.
The meeting concluded with an agreement that the Board will contract with Alvarez-Glassman and Colvin firm for legal counsel and that the cost will not exceed $20,000.
The contract will be made and ratified at the Board of Trustees’ next meeting set for October 23, with open session starting at 5:30 in T-1100 on the LAC campus.