By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
After discussing city of Yachats personnel issues and policy for much of the morning Friday, the City Council finally reached a point it had been moving toward since new members took office this month – its changing expectations for the city manager.
For nearly two hours the four council members – there is a vacancy it hopes to fill this month – discussed their ideas for a city planner, code enforcement, a finance director and whether the city should proceed with hiring an administrative assistant.
Councilor Greg Scott, who was elected to the council in November but who had served for 11 years previously, finally said the discussion had avoided the issue of changed expectations for City Manager Shannon Beaucaire.
“It’s a working position,” Scott said. “I submit the city manager we have today is not a working manager. She is delegating everything. I feel we need a working city manager.”
Three other council members – Mayor Leslie Vaaler, Mary Ellen O’Shaughnessey and Ann Stott – quickly jumped in to say that type of discussion should be done in executive session, which the public is not allowed to attend and media not allowed to report, but allows for more direct conversations with or about top administrators.
“I think it’s a conversation we need to have,” said Stott, who like Scott campaigned last fall on dissatisfaction over some management and council decisions. “We need to be direct and talk specifics.”
It could be a delicate, complicated and potentially expensive conversation.
Beaucaire has been city manager since September 2017 and in November received a 6 percent raise and her contract renewed for two years. Her contract spells out in great detail her duties and responsibilities – and calls for six month’s salary and pay for all of her vacation time off if she is let go.
But she is also one of four finalists for the city manager’s job in Carlton, a small community Yamhill County’s wine country. The Carlton council was scheduled to make a decision Friday and negotiate with its pick this week.
The Yachats community appears to be divided on Beaucaire’s performance.
She is praised for completing some expensive infrastructure projects, negotiating contracts, updating the city’s website and technology (which Scott used to oversee), updating city policies, winning grants and bringing greater oversight and attention to the city’s properties – including the move of city offices into the long-vacant 501 Building.
Her critics disagree with her approach on code enforcement, planning and oversight of financial operations – all services which have been contracted out – communication style, and how issues ranging from vacation rentals to a street paving project to testing wastewater for coronavirus mushroomed into larger, contentious citywide debates.
Beaucaire had a majority of support from the previous City Council, but that changed when those members – John Moore, Max Glenn and Jim Tooke — lost their re-election bids in November.
“When the council changes the expectations change,” O’Shaughnessey said.
On Friday, Vaaler tried several times to engage Beaucaire in the discussion during the online meeting, especially after Scott’s comments, and when and how to schedule an executive session.
“I would encourage the mayor to contact the city attorney,” Beaucaire simply replied, ending the discussion.
Big change in council direction
The new council is definitely going a different direction than the previous council on city personnel. It wants the city to eventually end contracts with the Oregon Cascades West Council of Governments for planning and financial services and is debating how or if to hire someone locally to handle code enforcement.
PLANNING:
The Albany-based regional agency currently provides a planner 10-12 hours a week, now mostly working remotely. But that person works for two other cities and CoG wants to find someone else. Beaucaire said Friday that the agency recently advertised for a new Yachats planner to work 30 hours a week and got five applicants.
Vaaler and Scott said Friday that a Yachats resident who appears to be qualified recently approached them about doing the work. Councilors said they would prefer to cut ties with CoG and contract with a local person, if he or she is qualified and can get up to speed on local and state planning issues.
CODE ENFORCEMENT:
The city – and two city councils — have struggled for two years with its approach to and contracts for code enforcement to deal with everything from overgrown property, vacation rentals, restaurant grease traps, signs, fences and fireworks. It currently contracts with TCB Security of Newport for patrols and other duties two days a week.
O’Shaughnessey, Stott and Scott were critical of the current program, pressing to find someone in Yachats to do the job, working more with residents and businesses on education and enforcement, and being more active in vacation rental licensing, inspection and compliance.
“Having an out of town firm who basically drives around town eight hours a day is ineffective,” Scott said.
The council is scheduled to hear from Matt Frank, the director of operations for TCB Security, at its meeting this week.
FINANCE:
After contracting with and endorsing financial services from CoG for almost two years, Beaucaire reversed course in November and proposed bringing those duties back in house by hiring a finance employee.
Scott campaigned on doing just that – but making the person report directly to the City Council and not the city manager. Scott said while he helped develop the document setting up the council/city manager form of government, the council once had two sources of information – a public works director and a city recorder. Now it has one – the city manager. “I am advocating a second voice that reports to the council.”
There are lots of issues with that, Vaaler said. It would require an election to change the city charter and goes against portions of Beaucaire’s contract that says she supervises all city employees.
That didn’t faze Scott. “I’m willing to pursue a charter amendment as soon as May,” he said. “I don’t feel particularly constrained by this particular clause in the city manager’s contract.”
Vaaler and O’Shaughnessey disagreed, with Vaaler saying she strongly supports the council/city manager form of government and Yachats had no one like former Mayor Ron Brean, who handled much of the day-to-day operations before Yachats hired its first city administrator five years ago. “When I ran for mayor I was not running for the city manager’s job,” she said.
Stott said she would feel more comfortable with a finance director reporting to the council “so that we’re not relying only on the city manager.”
But Vaaler and the three council members agreed to move away from CoG’s contract handling finances over the next six month and bring that position back in-house.
ADMINSTRATIVE ASSISTANT:
This is another tangled personnel issue. The 2020-21 budget contains money to hire an office administrative assistant, a job now done by Anita Stites via an employment agency. Beaucaire notified the previous council in November she would like to go ahead with recruitment and hiring, and was told to proceed. The new council, at its first meeting in January, also OK’d proceeding with the first round of interviews – but to let applicants know that the position was in jeopardy.
On Friday, Vaaler and council members told Beaucaire to stop. “I have great concern going forward with the interviews,” Vaaler said, until the council sets new, overall direction on city personnel.
Beaucaire said the city might lose the position because of its contract with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees limits the length of time it can use full-time contractors in the office, and would need the union’s agreement to be extended again.
“We are changing direction and that’s on us,” O’Shaughnessey said.
TAKING OF MINUTES:
City staff have struggled with how they are taking minutes of council and commission meetings since Helen Anderson left that contracted position last fall. There are increasing complaints from commission members and the public that meeting minutes are not readily available or that they are too truncated to be of much help.
Councilors asked Beaucaire to find a better solution quickly, suggesting she recruit and contract with someone locally to do the work.
“This is the best educated community on the Oregon coast, according to the U.S. Census,” said Scott. “I am strongly suggesting to out-source this position … to take pressure off staff.”
So newly elected Mayor Vaaler and other councils members were chosen mostly due to their promises of “transparency” to the good folks of Yachats. But one of their first decisions is to hold an executive session to discuss the city manager position where the neither the public, nor the media can attend and report.
Well, that didn’t take long to break campaign promises did it? So much for transparency.
And BTW Council, if you are going to hire a City Manager — let them manage. Quit trying to micro-manage everything. A finance person should report to the City Manager who works for the town. As soon as you have people who do work for the town reporting to multiple entities you’re going to run into even more problems than you already have. Keep it simple, yes?
Council Members: Any change in the city charter should be approved by the citizens of Yachats. If you don’t do this, you won’t get re-elected.