SPECIAL REPORT: After three years of fear, mismanagement and inaction, Central Oregon Coast Fire & Rescue board finally had to act after pornography complaints about chief

 

By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com

There were the five days last September while Central Oregon Coast Fire & Rescue personnel battled wildfires in Otis when their chief disappeared from headquarters in Waldport.

There was the mailing from the fire district to voters explaining a tax levy request last November that the chief never sent out.

There was the $1.1 million federal civil rights lawsuit – supported by a state investigation — by a former fire captain accusing the chief of firing him because of his race.

There was the 2019 resignation of the fire district’s medical director who refused to work with the chief.

Or the broken radios used to dispatch and communicate with firefighters, forcing them to use cell phones instead; two years of stalling on the promised reconstruction of a substation in Tidewater; or the seven weeks last fall when firefighters complained he wasn’t at work.

The list of Woodson’s issues was almost endless.

It seemed nothing could get Gary Woodson, chief of the Central Oregon Coast Fire District in Waldport, in hot water with the district’s five-member board. After a favorable evaluation a year ago, the board gave him a 3 percent raise.

But the board just couldn’t ignore the pornography.

After three years of Woodson sending pornography and racist jokes to employees from his home computer or cell phone, one employee finally had enough. On Dec. 18 the employee sent the pictures to board members along with a formal sexual harassment workplace complaint.

Among other things, the photos showed a graphic, fully naked woman, a video of woman baring her chest with the words “Wear your mask” across it, jokes about prison sex, and bikinis as face masks.

But that didn’t get the 60-year-old Woodson fired.

Instead, a day after receiving the complaint, the board put Woodson on paid leave. On Feb. 5 the board wrote Woodson a check for three months salary – $16,408 after state and federal taxes — to quietly leave if he promised not to sue for wrongful dismissal.

The board never announced Woodson’s departure.

The separation agreement was negotiated by board chair Tim Grady, who three months after it was signed has not yet shared the document with other board members.

Forced out in Pendleton too

Woodson was a fire administrator in Lake of the Ozarks, Mo. before being hired as fire chief in 2010 in Pendleton. He was there four years when he was called into the city manager’s office in February 2014 and forced to resign.

City of Pendleton officials and the firefighters union there refused to tell YachatsNews why Woodson was sent packing.

Woodson was working for the Oregon Department of Corrections when Central Oregon Coast began searching for a new chief in 2016. He was one of three candidates recommended by the Special Districts Association of Oregon and hired March 1, 2017, as chief in Waldport.

Formed by voters in 1998, the fire district stretches from Waldport, up Oregon Highway 34 through rural subdivisions along the Alsea River and then into the Coast Range to Five Rivers. It has a yearly operating budget of $836,000, six employees and, now with the help of an intergovernmental agreement with the Seal Rock Fire District, responded to 1,200 calls last year.

The district had already given up its ambulance service to Pacific West Ambulance when Woodson arrived in 2017. His ranking officer was Capt. Nestor Alves, who had been hired out of California only months before.

Fifteen months later Woodson dismissed Alves over a dispute that he had not been able to complete his Oregon EMT certification. Alves filed a $1.1 million lawsuit in federal court in January 2020 alleging Woodson had expressed “animosity” toward Hispanics, discriminated against him because of his race, and was retaliated against because he reported safety violations to the state.

An Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries investigation, which concluded in November 2019, said there was substantial evidence that Woodson retaliated against Alves because he is Hispanic.

While the fire district is refuting most of the accusations in Alves’ lawsuit, he wasn’t the only one who said Woodson called him demeaning names.

Another COCF&R firefighter — who asked that his name not be used for fear of retaliation — told YachatsNews that Woodson used racist slurs toward him and, in addition to pornography, sent him racially tinged emails, photos and texts. Afraid he could lose his job, the firefighter said he just put up with it.

Others did not. Firefighters left for other departments or jobs and volunteers dropped out because of Woodson and his chaotic, demeaning management style.

“We’ve lost volunteers and really good career staff,” said the firefighter. “They couldn’t be part of what was going on anymore.”

Much of the issue, firefighters said, revolved around Woodson’s erratic, hostile – and sometimes nonexistent – management style.

“He’d come in and say ‘I’m the f—ing fire chief. If you don’t do it I’ll fire you,” one firefighter said. “You’d come into work and you don’t know what his mood was.”

All the while not much was getting done.

A safety committee stopped meeting. Training was inadequate or had virtually ended. Equipment fell into disrepair. Work on the long-promised substation in Tidewater stalled. There were no personnel evaluations. In the summer of 2019 the district’s medical director, Dr. Joshua Cook of Newport, resigned in a letter to the board, citing Woodson’s “unsafe EMS leadership practices.”

Came to a head in November

After three years in the job, Woodson’s leadership of Central Oregon Coast Fire & Rescue came to a head last November in a two-page letter to the board from the firefighters union and the association representing the district’s volunteers. The letter cited issue after issue with Woodson — including an allegation of driving district vehicles after drinking – and threatened a public vote of no confidence if the board did not act within six days.

“We feel, and the local firefighter union endorses, that Mr. Woodson is not willing or able to continue to make our district keep moving in a forward and positive direction,” the letter said. “We ask you to take immediate measures.”

The board considered the letter in executive, or closed, session and turned again to the Special Districts Association for help. The Salem-based group advises fire, water, port and other small jurisdictions with legal, organizational, insurance, planning and other needs.

It assigned an investigator to look into the firefighter and volunteers’ complaint. He reported back Nov. 23 during another executive session of the board.

The SDAO investigator’s report has not been made public. But word of the report reached employees, some of whom felt it did not go far or look deep enough.

That prompted the employee’s sexual harassment complaint Dec. 18 in an email to board members – along with the pornographic pictures, video and off-color jokes. Because it was a sexual harassment complaint, YachatsNews is not identifying the employee and portions of the complaint have been redacted to protect the employee’s identity.

“In all my years I have never had a boss send explicit or sexual images or messages and I honestly didn’t know what to do,” the employee wrote in the complaint. “So I ignored them.

“As others started being more comfortable sharing their experiences with the rest of us, it became clear I needed to do my part …”

“I no longer feel comfortable with Chief Woodson as my boss as I have been sent pictures and a video that no grown man should send … failure to take corrective action immediately will result in legal action that I would personally like to avoid, not only for the district’s sake but for our committed community that we serve.”

The next day Grady went to the district office and put Woodson on paid leave.

The district’s lawyer, Christy Monson of Eugene, specializes in advising small governments who find themselves in hot water. Monson hired HR Answers of Tigard to do a second investigation and write a report just for her – a practice that enabled the district to keep the findings confidential.

Monson reported the results of the second investigation in general terms to the board at another closed, executive session Jan 23. Representatives of YachatsNews and the Newport News-Times were able to attend the session but under Oregon law could not legally report on what was said.

After hearing from Monson, the board came out of executive session and in a public meeting authorized Grady to negotiate a departure agreement with Woodson.

In order to report what happened, YachatsNews filed four records requests with the district and Grady seeking the employee complaints, the union demand letter, the settlement agreement, and other documents. It took two months to deliver all but one of them.

Grady did not respond to a Feb. 11 request to turn over the July 2019 resignation notice from the district’s medical director. As outlined in Oregon law, YachatsNews two months later asked Lincoln County District Attorney Lanee Danforth to order the district to turn over the resignation notice and other communication. The district complied April 26.

Firefighters and others said that response is typical of much of the current board – ignore or shrug at requests, questions or criticisms – and see if they go away.

Woodson did not respond to requests by YachatsNews to defend his work or comment on the various complaints and allegations.

Complaint not first, just the final straw

The employee’s Dec. 18 sexual harassment complaint was not the first. It was just the final straw.

Another employee told YachatsNews that soon after Woodson started working in Waldport the chief began sending sexually inappropriate photos and emails, racist texts and emails, and directed racially disparaging comments to him.

“It was funny to him,” the employee told YachatsNews. “I don’t think it appeared weird to him.”

The employee asked Woodson to stop. The chief did, but continued sending send them to others.

The SDAO investigator talked with the employee in late November as part of the union and volunteer’s complaint. But when the employee didn’t hear anything more, on Dec. 29 that employee emailed Grady with an official sexual harassment complaint against Woodson.

In the complaint, the employee said he had “never been subjected to these types of harassment until Gary Woodson was hired as fire chief.” The employee told Grady that he hadn’t said anything until now “because I feared retaliation and that I would lose my job …”

Critics say fire board unsure what to do

The Central Oregon Coast Fire & Rescue District was formed in 1998 when voters approved splitting it off from the city of Waldport in a 345-249 vote.

Tim Grady, now an insurance agent and member of the family that owned Grady’s Market (now Ray’s Marketplace) was voted onto the original board in 1998 and has been re-elected five times. After 23 years he decided to not seek re-election this month.

Dave Brooks, the owner of Alsea Bay Power Products, has been on the board for 16 years and is running for re-election, but is not actively campaigning and did not submit a statement for the county voters pamphlet. Challenging him are Greg Dunn, a Waldport business owner, fire volunteer and City Council member, and Kathryn Menefee, a nurse at Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital in Newport and wife of Nestor Alves.

Peter Carlich, who was appointed to the board in 2019, after continually advocating for building the Tidewater station, is being opposed by Todd Holt, a retired dairy farmer and owner of Peterson Park, a manufactured home subdivision.

Reda Eckerman, recorder for the city of Waldport who was first elected in 2017, and Kevin Battles, a banker appointed in 2016 and elected twice since, are not on the May 18 ballot.

YachatsNews sent two emails to board members – to their district email address and personal email address — asking them to talk about district issues and troubles with Woodson. Only Carlich – who said he argued unsuccessfully to fire Woodson for cause and not pay him to go away – responded.

Carlich is critical of Grady’s leadership, communication, and oversight of the chief, and said the board should have reacted much earlier and delved deeper into complaints about Woodson and district problems.

“The chief would tell them what they wanted to hear … and they’d buy it,” Carlich said. “Damage control was his (Woodson’s) No. 1 thing and the actual work was secondary.
“I don’t think the board took much of this seriously until it all piled up. They knew they had a problem; they just didn’t know how to deal with it.”

Assistant promoted to chief’s job

Firefighters and volunteers say they worked in fear and put up with Woodson until Jamie Mason, 40, arrived in February 2020 as assistant fire chief.

Mason had been with North Lincoln Fire & Rescue for eight years, had worked as a trainer for the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training for three years, and served eight years in the Air Force as a firefighter on bases in Germany and Idaho.

Mason told YachatsNews it was readily apparent there were massive issues within the department. He resumed regular training, started reviving the ranks of volunteers, began to sort out the excuses for not working on the Tidewater station, and tried to beef up staffing enough so that the district no longer responded to calls with one firefighter – a huge safety issue.

Another firefighter said Mason’s professionalism “gave employees the confidence and strength to stand up to the chief and the board.”

That eventually led to the firefighters’ letter to the board in November, the formal employee complaints in December, the investigations and Woodson’s eventual departure in February.

After Woodson agreed to go, the board decided to forgo a search for his replacement and appoint Mason as interim chief after an outpouring of support from firefighters, volunteers and representatives of the Seal Rock district.

After two months of delays on working out Mason’s contract, the board – with Brooks and Battles absent — last week  approved a two-year agreement.

Work is now proceeding rapidly on the Tidewater station and the Five Rivers station is coming up to promised insurance standards, seven more volunteers finished their academy training last month, a 20-year-old failing fire engine was repaired, Mason is seeking a state grant to pay for new radios, and designing a budget to stabilize finances until the district can ask voters to approve a bond to acquire and remodel the main station in Waldport that it now leases from the city.

“He (Woodson) was telling people stuff was getting fixed and it was not getting done,” one firefighter said. “Now it is.”

• Editor’s note: This story was reported over three months using publicly available records and interviews with a dozen current and former Central Oregon Coast employees and volunteers. Of the five district board members, only one responded to questions from YachatsNews.

 

NEXT WEEK: Candidates for three COCF&R board positions give their views on the district.

 

To read the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries investigation report go here.

To read former fire captain Nestor Alves’ federal lawsuit against Gary Woodson and the fire district go here.

To read documents on Dr. Joshua Cook’s resignation go here.

To read the letter to the COCF&R board from the volunteers association and firefighters union go here.

To read the first employee’s sexual harassment complaint against Gary Woodson go here.

To read the second employee’s sexual harassment complaint against Gary Woodson go here.

To read the fire district’s separation agreement with Gary Woodson go here.