By QUINTON SMITH and CHERYL ROMANO/YachatsNews.com
WALDPORT – The Central Oregon Coast Fire & Rescue District is back to having a full, five-member board.
Just six hours after Lincoln County commissioners appointed one member to the board, the new three-member majority voted unanimously Thursday evening to appoint two more residents to fill vacant seats.
County commissioners Thursday morning voted 3-0 to appoint Ray Woodruff of Waldport to a one-year term on the fire board. That gave the board a majority when it met Thursday evening to pass its 2022-23 budget and consider appointments to fill two other vacant seats.
With no discussion or interviews with six others who applied for the county appointment, COCF&R board member Kevin Battles nominated Jon MacCullough and Zach Akin to fill two remaining open seats. They were approved unanimously when Woodruff and Reda Eckerman joined him with yes votes.
They will be sworn in July 12.
The three new members replace Todd Holt and Kathryn Menefee, who were recalled by voters in an election June 7, and chair Buster Pankey who resigned June 13.
Holt also resigned June 13, but Menefee would not and did not appear at June’s board meeting, leaving it without a quorum and unable to pass its 2022-23 budget by a July 1 deadline.
That meant county commissioners had to hold a special meeting Thursday morning to fill Menefee’s seat, following the 5 p.m. Wednesday official certification of June’s election results.
It took 10 minutes.
Without doing interviews and going by an application with two questions on it, commissioners made their choice from seven people seeking the appointment. Woodruff was in the top two choices of commissioners Claire Hall and Doug Hunt and among the four top choices of commissioner Kaety Jacobson.
Hunt said he chose his top two candidates – Woodruff and Waldport city councilor Greg Dunn – based on experience and the understanding of government and the role of elected boards.
Commission chair Claire Hall’s top candidates were Woodruff and Akin, a Lincoln County Sheriff’s deputy and a former COCF&R firefighter.
Commissioner Kaety Jacobson had four top choices – Woodruff, Dunn, Akin and Cheri Brubaker of Waldport, the news director at Yaquina Bay Communications Radio in Newport.
With Woodruff among all three of the commissioners’ top choice, they quickly voted 3-0 to appoint him to a one-year term on the COCF&R board.
Woodruff, who is married to Waldport city councilor Sue Woodruff, was on the fire board for 16 years but resigned in 2016 after enough signatures were gathered to hold a recall election. The issue then was the district giving up its ambulance service, which had become a financial drain. Six years later, the turnover of that service to Pacific West Ambulance is considered the right decision.
Hunt, who is leaving the commission in December after 10 years, spent the first few minutes before announcing his selections criticizing Oregon’s recall process and recounted his 2002 removal from the Lincoln County School District board over the closure of Eddyville School.
“Recalls can be used for the worse reasons,” he said.
Central Oregon Coast district voters recalled Holt and Menefee by wide margins over allegations they were involved in improper communication and meetings, including one where they attempted to dismiss fire chief Jamie Mason. The district’s firefighter union and volunteer association also passed votes of no confidence in Pankey, Holt and Menefee.
After his appointment Thursday, Woodruff told YachatsNews in an interview that he resigned in 2016 to spare the district the expense of an election and to try to restore calm. He termed both sides of the campaign to recall Holt and Menefee “really cantankerous” and “not fair to anybody.”
“I was disgusted by the whole process,” Woodruff said. “I think it tore the whole city apart.”
MacCulloch is retired after 31 years of contract management in the aerospace industry. He volunteers with Lincoln County emergency management and its Citizen Emergency Response Team. In his county application, MacCullough said his work experience and high level of ethics involved in government contract management would be helpful to the district.
“While I have only been in Waldport for three years, I feel this is a benefit as I am free from the history that has hampered getting the rest results for a number of years,” he wrote.
Akin has been a sheriff’s deputy for six years, is currently its canine officer and was a COCF&R firefighter/paramedic at Central Coast and in the Willamette Valley.
The others who applied for the county and board appointment were Jim Sehl of Tidewater, manager of the Waldport Moose Lodge; and Dakota Hartzell of Waldport, a ServiceMaster Restoration employee and a new member of the district’s budget committee.
Woodruff told YachatsNews he didn’t know what to expect from commissioners Thursday.
“I was kind of surprised. I didn’t think I’d make it,” he said, calling the other candidates strong and good.
Woodruff said it will take time for the newly constituted board to catch up with district operations and issues and get to know each other better.
“I don’t know many of the people there,” he said of district staff. “It will be a slow process, a trust-building process.”
They appointed someone who was facing a recall of their own at one time and was forced to resign? That makes no sense.