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City to consider hiring in-house attorney for first time since 2018
George Petrulakis
Current City Attorney George Petrulakis, a land-use attorney who worked on a contract basis, tendered his resignation last month.

The Turlock City Council will consider changing the job description of city attorney to once again make it a full-time, in-house position.

Current City Attorney George Petrulakis, a land-use attorney who worked on a contract basis, tendered his resignation last month.

“I think I would’ve been surprised back then (2021) to find I was still doing the city attorney job years later,” Petrulakis told the Journal in September.

The city has not had an in-house, city-employed attorney since March 2018, following the departure of Phaedra Norton.

“If the city council approves, our department would be able to take the next step and start advertising the position,” said Jessie Dhami, the city’s human relations director.

The city contracted with the firm of Churchwell White LLC in 2019 after surveying city department heads and staff. According to a staff report from March of that year, “the responses strongly supported the retention of a firm, due to the breadth of experience available and response time for services.” 

The agreement with Churchwell White required Turlock to pay the firm $30,000 per month, regardless of whether or not the city used all the contracted hours for legal services, reports indicate.

Doug White, the managing partner of the firm, sat in the city attorney’s seat during council meetings.

Between Norton and White, Jose Sanchez served as interim city attorney for about a year.

“I think a case could be made for either,” said City Manager Sue Borrego. “But it’s my experience now that staff want to be able to have somebody on site that they can go to and touch base with. I think it’s as simple as that.”

The council will also vote to make the city attorney’s salary part of the management salary schedule. The position would pay between $20,039 and $24,357 per month

“We’d like to see a smooth transition with competitive candidates as soon as possible,” said Borrego. “But we’re coming up on the holidays, so I’m not certain exactly what that will look like. But my goal is to help the council get this stabilized as soon as possible.”