City attorney says 17% cut would slow legal work and leave office below recommended staffing

City Attorney Stacy Arzeda told the Greeley City Council on Tuesday that her office can reach its 17% budget-reduction target only by cutting two positions, leaving the department below the staffing level identified as appropriate in a recent assessment and slowing legal turnaround for city departments.

Arzeda said the proposal eliminates an administrative assistant position that was left unfilled earlier this year and does not refill an attorney position vacated through the city’s voluntary separation program. She said the attorney handled contracts and other high-volume work, and that losing the position will force that workload onto the remaining attorneys. Because the City Attorney’s Office does not generate its own revenue, she said, the reduction plan relies entirely on spending cuts rather than any offsetting income.

The proposal also trims operating lines across the office budget. Arzeda said those reductions include dropping an artificial-intelligence legal research service that the office has used for about a year. She told council the tool, offered through the office’s legal research provider rather than a general-use chatbot, has been “pretty successful” and has helped staff across the organization, including paralegals, by giving them a better starting point for legal research within a closed system.

In response to council questions about staffing history, Arzeda said the office has been close to fully staffed only in the last year to year and a half and would have been fully staffed for the first time in about a decade if the departing attorney had remained a few more months. She said a staffing assessment completed last year found the office’s current funded size was appropriate for Greeley’s size, workload and growth, meaning the proposed reduction would take the office below that level.

Arzeda said the loss is especially significant because only a limited number of attorneys in her office are available for general legal work. She said four attorneys are dedicated to environmental and water matters and funded through enterprise funds, while other lawyers handle prosecution or in-house tort litigation. “It is probably a bigger loss than you would think just losing one person,” she told council.

The discussion came during Item 20, a preliminary budget conversation ahead of the city manager’s recommended budget later this summer. A city official thanked Arzeda for presenting a plan that met the requested target while trying to minimize impacts.