Same legal firm represents four of nine county cities

Large firm represents Healdsburg, Windsor, Cloverdale and Cotati
For those who’ve attended a city council meeting, there are usually an array of council members sitting at the dais and to the side, a variety of staff members; the city clerk, the city manager and, in many cases, an attorney.
Most people go through much of their lives without interacting with a lawyer in an official capacity, but city staff and council members tend to rely on expert legal advice on a near-daily basis.
The communities of Healdsburg, Cotati, Petaluma, Cloverdale and Windsor all turn to the same law firm for their legal assistance, Meyers Nave.
The Oakland-based firm has total of 70 attorneys in six offices, practicing 17 different areas of law, including municipal law.
Meyers Nave serves as city attorney to almost 25 municipalities and as general counsel to dozens of counties and special districts.
Robin Donoghue is the City Attorney for Healdsburg and Cotati and the Town Attorney for Windsor.
Cloverdale’s City Attorney is Jose Sanchez, another Meyers Nave lawyer.
Eric Danly, formerly with Meyers Nave, is the city attorney for Petaluma.
As the attorney for three communities, Donoghue said she mainly works on contract review, looking over drafts of agenda items for council meetings, handles research questions and drafts memos to staff or council members on pending issues.
Donoghue also attends the majority of the council meetings for the municipalities that she represents.
When asked how much time she spends working on a specific community’s legal issues, Donoghue said it worked out to about a third of her time.
“The length of meetings can vary and sometimes there are special meetings, but I’d estimate I spend about 50 hours per month on Windsor, about the same on Healdsburg and a little less on Cotati,” she said.
The fact that none of these towns take up all of Donoghue’s time is exactly why firms such as Meyers Nave do such brisk business in representing communities.
By comparison, Santa Rosa has its own City Attorney Department, with a total of seven lawyers and six support staff employed by the city.
Meanwhile, the Meyers Nave branch in Santa Rosa has “two and a half” lawyers, including Donoghue herself, she said.
“For smaller towns there isn’t enough work to hire a full time attorney,” said Windsor Town Manager Linda Kelly. “You use them on an as-needed basis, it’s not as if they’re sitting around waiting for a project to come to them.”
The small local office doesn’t reflect the scope of Meyers Nave’s offerings to the cities, according to Healdsburg City Manager David Mickaelian.
“They are a large firm, with access to specialists,” he said. “When we have had airport issues, they have access to an aviation specialist. We deal with [Donoghue] as a generalist, so to speak, but it’s nice to have that mix of resources with Meyers Nave.”
Kelly said that just being able to bounce legal questions off of Donoghue was of vital importance for the business of running Windsor.
“It’s very important to have that access, especially as litigious as society can be in California,” Kelly said. “At every council meeting in my just about 20 years of city government, there has been a town attorney there.”
Donoghue said that even managing the legal issues of three different towns can be difficult.
“Time management is the most challenging thing,” she said. “There is so much going on in the North Bay and the county, with so many county initiatives, there is so much for staff and council to stay on top of.”
When present at council meetings, Donoghue is often listening for possible breaches of the Brown Act, California’s open meeting law.
“The Brown Act has so many different components, it can be challenging to stay compliant, so it’s important to have an attorney present or for any legal questions to be answered,” she said.
The City of Healdsburg’s contract with Meyers Nave is updated every two or three years with a rate breakdown that increases based on the Consumer Price Index.
Currently, the firm charges $230 per hour for general municipal work, $260 per hour for any specialty work on California Environmental Quality Act consults, water rights etc., $270 per hour for litigation, arbitration and labor negotiations, $130 per hour for travel time and $130 hour for paralegal work.