City owes law firm almost $20,000 for unpaid bills

By Katie Farrell
Staff writer

December 01, 2008 03:58 am

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NEWBURYPORT — Twelve bills sent by the city's law firm — some dating back as far as 2004 — were never paid, Mayor John Moak told the City Council last week.

Moak sent a memo and a detailed list of the statements, received from Kopelman and Paige law firm in Boston, to the council, asking them to agree to authorize using a portion of the city's free cash to pay the $19,680.36 tab.

The council sent the request to the Budget and Finance Committee, where it will be debated at an upcoming meeting, possibly as early as Thursday. That committee will give a recommendation to the full council, which will vote on the matter.

"We missed them," Moak said in an interview Friday. "There was an error."

The bills range in amount, with one as little as $27 and others as high as $4,000 to $5,000. The bills date back several years, including 2004 and 2005.

Moak said some of the bills came in during the first six months of his first term in office. There was some confusion in his office at that time as to what departmental budget would pay the legal fees. While the city has a general government legal budget, certain projects or legal questions such as planning and development issues can be paid for by a certain department's budget.

The unpaid bills are mostly administrative costs, or for issues like a title search, rather than an hourly bill for work, Moak said. Some of the bills also date back to previous administrations, Moak said.

Moak said his assistant, Cheryl Robertson, spent more than a month reviewing the city's records to make sure the bills flagged by Kopelman and Paige were actually never paid, and found that the law firm's records were accurate.

"There was a bill there, and it wasn't paid," the mayor said. "It's bills that were missed. We incurred the cost and we have to pay them."

According to the mayor's letter to the council, from June 2004 to Dec. 2005, the city's outstanding invoices total $9,436.82; from February 2006 to June 2006, the total is $9,205.04, and from September 2007, there is an unpaid invoice for $1,038.50.