The city of Blaine has announced it's looking for a new city prosecuting attorney to handle all misdemeanor criminal violations and civil infractions. The city recently posted a request for qualifications and proposal from qualified attorneys on its website. Any interested attorneys with at least five years of experience are being asked to submit their proposals no later than 4:30 p.m. on Monday, August 15.

Click here for the link to the city's website with all the pertinent information. The city's request says attorneys must be reasonably available for night and weekend contact from police officers and must be able to respond to defendants' telephone calls and emails within 48 hours.

All proposals submitted to the city will be vetted, and the most qualified attorneys will be invited to an interview. The new attorney must be approved by the Blaine City Council. For more information, call Sheri Sanchez at 360/332/8311 or email at ssanchez@cityofblaine.com.

In addition to listing the various qualifications necessary to be the city attorney, the city's request also lists the number of filings in Blaine Municipal Court in 2010. Here are the numbers:

Case Type	2010 Filings
Criminal Traffic	220
Criminal Non-traffic	171
Infraction Traffic	3,226
Infraction Non-traffic	85
Total	3,702

Presuming all those traffic infractions are things such as speeding and not coming to a full stop at a stop sign, that's about eight traffic tickets per day in 2010. With 4,684 people in Blaine as of the 2010 census, that means about 69 percent of Blaine's population received a traffic infraction in 2010. However, I wouldn't be surprised if many of the tickets went to Canadian citizens.  There might be a future story in there somewhere.