Oro Valley is looking to hire a new town attorney after the town council voted earlier this month to officially post the position, the first step in shifting oversight of the role from the town manager to the council itself.

The change restores a structure last used in 2013 and is intended to boost accountability and align legal guidance more closely with the council’s priorities.

The move comes as the town also considers merging legal duties to streamline costs and strengthen oversight of municipal affairs.

The town attorney position has been vacant since August following the retirement of Tobin Sidles.

According to the job posting, the next town attorney will serve as legal advisor to the town council and provide legal counsel for the town’s departments. The application deadline is Nov. 9, and the council plans to review applications and meet with candidates in December.

The hiring process will include a marketing plan to reach a wide range of applicants.

The new town attorney will primarily handle civil matters but will also manage the town’s five-person legal department and may oversee prosecutorial duties.

At its Oct. 1 meeting, the council discussed merging the town attorney position with the civil attorney role and shifting some work currently handled by an outside contract attorney to reduce billable hours.

This means the new town attorney would oversee all legal matters while also managing day-to-day civil issues previously handled by the civil attorney, such as contracts, property and zoning.

Mayor Joe Winfield said he reached out to several municipalities in Arizona of similar size to or larger than Oro Valley to see what arrangements their councils had with their town attorneys.

Of the 13 towns he reviewed, only Marana and Oro Valley did not have their town councils appoint and oversee the town attorney.

Vice Mayor Melanie Barrett said she believed having the town attorney report to the town manager was a structural anomaly and that it’s important for the position to instead report directly to the council. She added that combining the roles of town attorney and civil attorney could also save the town money.

“It’s been something I’ve long wanted, to bring the town attorney to report to the council,” Barrett said. “Now that both of these positions are open and we are going to be hiring someone in the town attorney’s department, it seemed an opportune time to move forward and make that move.”

Winfield said he believes having the town attorney report to the council would result in greater accountability and ensure the attorney’s advice aligns with the council’s direction, which he said had been an issue in the past.

However, he added that it creates a risk of politicizing the position.

“If you have one person, you don’t have a breadth of all these different legal professionals with exacting knowledge, but retaining them for services for a little bit less so you still have reach to a bench of a wide wealth of knowledge, which is still good,” said Councilmember Josh Nicolson.

The town council also unanimously voted during its Oct. 15 meeting to adopt a notice of intent to implement a multi-year increase to the town’s stormwater utility base rate, which, if approved, would raise the base rate to $6.50 by 2028. The council also approved proposed increases to the town’s parks and recreation fees.

Ian Stash is a journalism major at the University of Arizona and Tucson Spotlight intern. Contact him at istash@arizona.edu.

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