Ajit Thind, the new interim city attorney in Encinitas, has made his first public City Council appearance.
“It’s a great honor to be your city attorney,” Thind said at the start of his first regular Encinitas council meeting Wednesday.
Right now, his title is “interim” city attorney, but “I hope to take that off at some point,” Thind said, adding, “I look forward to working with the council and instituting its vision into policy and practice, and look forward to keeping Encinitas, Encinitas … .”
He replaces Tarquin Preziosi, who served from 2022 until this fall. In October, the council voted to terminate its contract with Preziosi’s firm, saying they had decided to go in a new direction, particularly reguarding high-density housing issues, but stressed that the termination was “without cause.”
“We need to be ready and proactive in housing,” Mayor Bruce Ehlers said at the time.
The council unanimously approved its agreement Wednesday with the firm that Thind works for — Colantuono, Highsmith & Whatley. It calls for Thind to serve as Encinitas interim city attorney and fellow lawyer Andrew Jared to be interim assistant city attorney, serving as backup for Thind at council meetings and being the attorney present at city Planning Commission meetings.
Each month, the firm will receive an hourly payment of $265 for up to 105 hours of work, or a monthly total of $27,825. If the city requires more than 105 hours of attorney services in a month, it will pay an extra $10 an hour. Special services and litigation work will be billed at the rate of $275 an hour, and any paralegal assistance will cost $210 an hour.
These prices are good until July 1, a city staff report states. At that point, the base hourly rate and the extra hourly rate will increase using the area’s latest Consumer Price Index figure. The special services rate will rise to $306 an hour, the litigation billing rate will be $325 an hour, and any human resource or personnel legal issues will cost $340 an hour.
A graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, Thind has a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California Berkeley, the web site for Colantuono, Highsmith & Whatley states. He currently serves as city attorney for the city of La Palma and has previously been assistant city attorney for Laguna Beach, Menifee and San Clemente, it states.
“He is also very active in the Orange County community,” it adds, mentioning that he is on the Public Law Center’s board of directors and has previously been involved with the South Asian Bar Association and his temple, the Sikh Center of Orange County.