By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
Oops. That didn’t last very long.
The interim Yachats city manager from Texas — who some City Council members thought they could entice to stay here — has submitted his resignation.
Lee Elliott’s last day will be June 3. He’s taking a job in Texarkana, Texas — where he also has a fiancee and a house.
Elliott, who has been working in various interim city roles in four states the past six years, began in Yachats in late March, replacing Shannon Beaucaire who left to become city manager in Carlton. Since arriving Elliott made it clear he was looking for a long-term job, that he might be interested in Yachats’ permanent position, that he had job applications out there — and consistently urged the council to “cast a wide net” for a permanent administrator.
They did not.
Instead, Mayor Leslie Vaaler and some other councilors expressed hope during discussions in April that Elliott could be enticed to stay.
Elliott apparently was disappointed when he arrived in Yachats that he would not be supervising department heads — in a city with 750 residents and less than a dozen employees. He attended last Thursday’s online City Council meeting while in Texas for a job interview. He was being paid $7,000 a month.
The City Council had already scheduled a meeting for 10 a.m. Wednesday to discuss the possibility of Elliott’s leaving and what to do about a contract employee who handles finances and payroll whose last day was Friday.
The city has an answer to the finance issue. It is hurriedly putting together a contract with Yachats resident Tom Lauritzen, who has done financial consulting for the city previously and has been helping Elliott prepare the 2021-22 budget.
But apparently the reality of Elliott’s likely departure hit home Thursday, a day before he submitted his resignation.
“We are in a crisis mode right now,” Councilor Ann Stott told others Thursday as the council attempted to fine-tune its goals for 2021. “We can’t focus on council goals until we focus on the crisis with the city manager and accounting position.”
“We need to have a discussion on the city manager position,” Vaaler said after Stott pressed the issue again.
That discussion will be Wednesday morning.
The council — which has four members who are new or have served less than two years — has yet to create a city manager job description, state its expectations for the job, or discuss the possibility of trying to find someone itself or using a recruitment firm in a process that usually takes 3-6 months.
Financial service issues
The issue of a financial services position is equally complicated and maybe more convoluted.
For almost three years the city has been paying Albany-based Oregon Cascades West Council of Governments $7,700 a month to provide a three-day-a-week clerk and weekly administrative oversight of its finances. Since taking office in January, the new council has wanted to stop that and hire a full-time employee to handle those duties plus other chores.
But it had not completed a job description or started advertising for someone to do that — and the CoG employee’s last day was Friday.
“It could be stated as a crisis,” Elliott told the council Thursday.
When the council was looking for an interim city manager in March, Lauritzen and former city manager Joan Davies approached the council and proposed to split the duties – Davies overseeing staff and Lauritzen handling finances – until it could find a permanent manager.
The council instead contracted with Elliott.
In April, Vaaler asked Lauritzen and Councilor Mary Ellen O’Shaughnessey to interview city staff to get their views on tasks and organizational issues. Lauritzen also began volunteering to help Elliott with other financial issues, including the upcoming budget.
With the departure of the CoG worker, Vaaler and Elliott approached Lauritzen with a proposal that he work on a $55-an-hour contract for 10-15 hours a week to handle finances until a new person can be hired.
On Thursday, the council voted 4-1 to terminate the city’s contract with the council of governments – with up to a 30-day transition. Councilor Anthony Muirhead voted no, saying “I still don’t know what our plan is …”
That led into another prolonged discussion about the finance/accounting position and Elliott’s idea to instead hire a city recorder instead of an administrative assistant to handle finances and other duties.
Councilor Greg Scott, who has been proposing a finance position since campaigning for the council last fall, argued strongly against a recorder position, saying it would only add confusion to Yachats’ city manager/council form of government.
“As we’ve said many times before … Yachats is not normal,” Scott said, referring to the lack of department heads. “It’s not a very big organization.”
Other coastal cities are facing similar issues. The city of Waldport has been unable to fill an accounting position while offering a $70,000 a year salary and benefits. The Yachats council had discussed offering up to $65,000.
After more discussion, Lauritzen – who spent much of his professional career as what he called a “corporate change management specialist” – suggested that the council focus on the transition away from CoG for the next 30 days, see what kind of talent is available, and what kind of re-structuring is possible with the current staff.
“It’s premature to talk about titles and roles until we have a really good idea of the tasks,” he said.
Lauritzen said his work would focus on “tasks assigned by” Elliott, and would have a contract ready for the council at its Wednesday meeting.
“You are not buying hours, you’re buying tasks,” he said. “I don’t want a full-time job. I’m retired. I like to get in, get the solution in place and get out.”