Warren Wilson will replace John Cafferty on Nov. 2

POST FALLS — The former deputy attorney for the city of Coeur d’Alene has been hired as the new legal services director for the city of Post Falls.

Warren Wilson, who worked for the city of Coeur d’Alene for 12 years, will become the first in-house attorney for the city of Post Falls starting on Nov. 2. Wilson will replace the city’s contract attorney, John Cafferty.

City Administrator Shelly Enderud said the city has been budgeting to hire an in-house attorney for several years. She said the city had planned to hire a staff attorney to replace longtime contract attorney Jerry Mason when he retired.

“But Jerry retired sooner than we anticipated, so we replaced him with John (Cafferty),” she said. “We decided to see how that would work.”

She said Cafferty’s firm, Hawley Troxell, was charging the city $165 an hour, which amounted to approximately $125,000 a year in legal services.

“They were looking at hiring another attorney in their office help handle the workload,” she said, explaining that prompted the city to see if it could find a quality in-house attorney instead of renewing its services with Cafferty’s firm. “It was kind of perfect timing.”

Enderud said having someone in-house will be more convenient than having to coordinate with an attorney from an office in Coeur d’Alene.

“But don’t get me wrong, we were happy with their work,” she said. “To be honest, I think John probably gave us a lot of free hours.”

Enderud said her community development department is swamped with development requests, so it will be nice to have an attorney on staff to help deal with that.

According to Wilson’s contract, he will work only for the city and cannot accept outside work.

His initial salary will be $4,230.77 per pay period for six months, which amounts to $55,000. After the first six months, Wilson will receive a 5 percent increase in pay if he receives a satisfactory employment evaluation, which would amount to $115,000 per year.

After one year, Wilson will receive a performance-based increase in salary increase based on a salary range the city has adopted for department heads.

Along with the same health benefits, deferred compensation and retirement benefits as other city employees, Wilson will accrue paid time off at a rate of 10.23 hours per pay period the contract says, which amounts to 265.98 hours per year or 6.65 weeks of paid time off.

Wilson, who is taking a hiatus between jobs, could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon.