By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
Divisions on the Yachats City Council moved into public view Thursday during its first meeting of 2020, starting with a split vote for council president and ending with a disagreement whether it had approved hiring a facilitator to help craft goals for the year.
Electing a council president during the first meeting of the year is usually a routine, quick and unanimous task. Max Glenn was chosen the past two years. The council president’s main duty is to meet weekly along with the mayor to advise and be the first-line supervisor of the city manager.
But after praising Glenn for his service, Councilor James Kerti – who often agrees with and votes with Councilor Leslie Vaaler on contentious issues — nominated Vaaler for the role. Kerti cited Vaaler’s deep involvement on a variety of tasks during her first year on the council.
Mayor John Moore — who regularly teams with Glenn to counter arguments and votes by Vaaler and Kerti – nominated Glenn. Moore praised Glenn for his work with regional groups and coastal legislators.
When a show of hands displayed the 2-2 split, Councilor James Tooke said he supported Glenn for president and Moore quickly announced a 3-2 result.
An hour later during council comments at the end of the meeting, Vaaler used her dissatisfaction with a series of December emails with City Manager Shannon Beaucaire and then with Moore in which she questioned the hiring of a facilitator to help with goal setting next week.
Vaaler’s style often conflicts with that of Moore, Glenn and Tooke. Vaaler combs pages of city and council documents for typographic errors, wording issues, and details that Moore, Glenn and Tooke often prefer to leave for city staff. Frequently testing Moore and Glenn’s patience, Vaaler is the first and most frequent questioner, is more willing to probe details of agreements and decisions, and often questions – but generally ends up agreeing with – big and small spending issues.
On Thursday, Vaaler said she was only bringing up the hiring of a facilitator because she believed it was a policy decision that the council had apparently not voted to approve. Vaaler said 2019 council minutes showed no mention of voting to hire a facilitator.
“I feel upset about this and it’s time to clear the air,” Vaaler said. “Different people have different viewpoints on how things should be handled.”
Moore, apparently in emails to Vaaler and then at Thursday’s meeting, disagreed that hiring a facilitator was a policy decision. It’s an administrative decision that should be handled by Beaucaire, he said.
Moore also said he “would have preferred” that Vaaler not bring up the issue in a public council meeting.
After Beaucaire said she had been asked to hire a facilitator, Moore said he thought the council agreed to hire a facilitator “but if not, I apologize.”
Glenn said he remembered agreeing on a facilitator.
“That’s not my recollection,” said Kerti.
Tooke said he had “no idea” but later added “the discussion we’re having right now will help us in the future.”
Vaaler said she believed the council was still struggling to determine the difference between policy and administrative decisions under its almost 3-year-old city manager form of government.
Moore agreed, but added “that a facilitated session is an ideal way to help figure that out.”
Beaucaire has hired Sara Wilson, a Portland consultant with local government experience in Kansas, California and Oregon to interview councilors and city staff, facilitate the session Thursday, Jan. 9, then debrief with staff and write a report. The cost is $3,050.
But Vaaler continued to express skepticism of a facilitated session, saying that Wilson is not elected “and may influence the outcome of the meeting” by the way she runs it.
Glenn said he has already had done his telephone interview with Wilson, who asked him to name his top outcome for the session.
“I told her we need to understand the difference between policy making and administration,” he said, “… including the idea of not micromanaging.”
In other business Thursday, the council:
- Once again put off a final vote on proposed changes to its vacation rental rules, after deciding to see how to better integrate its new web-based complaint system with ordinance language and whether to require license applicants to acknowledge if deed restrictions prevented using property in some neighborhoods as vacation rentals.
- Appointed Lance Bloch, Don Groth, Dawn Keller, John Purcell and Brad Webb to the budget committees for the city and the Yachats Urban Renewal Agency.