By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
YACHATS – A Waldport city councilor who is the head of a Lincoln and Tillamook county nonprofit is now the leading and lone candidate to become Yachats’ next city manager.
Heide Lambert was one of three finalists for the Yachats job in the fall but withdrew her application when she said it would not be good timing to leave her job at CASA of Lincoln and Tillamook Counties because of staffing and budget issues.
But months passed since then and the Yachats council stumbled on picking a new manager from the two remaining finalists in late December. Lambert contacted Mayor Leslie Vaaler a week ago to say she would now consider the job – if the council wanted to resume its interview process.
After failing in its own 10-month, homemade search, the council decided two weeks ago to consider an executive search firm. Jensen Strategies of Portland submitted a $25,000 proposal to help the city find a new manager, but that was put aside Wednesday after Lambert re-entered the picture.
The council voted unanimously to fast-track the interview process, scheduling an in-person interview in executive session for 10:30 a.m. Friday, two Zoom online sessions with the public at 7 p.m. Monday and 10 a.m. Tuesday, and interviews with four commission chairs Monday morning. Lambert would also meet with city staff early next week.
The council then decided to meet in another executive session – likely Friday, Jan. 28 — to discuss feedback from staff, commission chairs, the public and their own interview impressions. A vote to hire must come in a public session.
Councilors had already checked Lambert’s references prior to selecting her as a finalist – but she backed out before she was named publicly. On Wednesday, Vaaler asked Councilor Mary Ellen O’Shaughnessey to help initiate more formal background checks this week.
“I’m really excited Ms. Lambert has re-considered,” said Councilor Ann Stott, who along with Councilor Greg Scott had been the most critical of the council’s search process and decision-making.
Vaaler, who with O’Shaughnessey had voted in December against offering a contract to Gretchen Dubie of Yachats, also seemed pleased that a former finalist had re-emerged.
Scott, who is leaving town for 10 days, and will not be able to participate in the interviews or decision, urged the council to keep moving.
“I’m very comfortable with this particular candidate,” he said Wednesday. “I do support this nominee.”
Candidate background
Lambert has been the executive director of Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children of Lincoln and Tillamook Counties since 2020. She oversees a staff of five people and a $1 million yearly budget. From 2015-20 she was executive director of Neighbors for Kids in Depoe Bay, which provides pre-school and after-school programs for children and 3-17. She was also the executive director of Seashore Family Literacy in Waldport for a year.
She was on the Waldport Planning Commission from 2019-20 and then elected to the Waldport City Council in November 2020.
In a cover letter to the council last June, Lambert touted her work the past 10 years in Lincoln County, including dealing with boards, employees, volunteers and “making sound decisions, developing strategic plans, managing annual budgets, and serving a wide variety of stakeholders.”
Lambert said her service on the Waldport Planning Commission and council allowed her to learn about municipal laws and procedures, planning, economic development, and state and federal laws and regulations.
“I believe this would be an asset to Yachats, as I have a different perspective and an understanding of what a council needs to do to make informed decisions,” she wrote.
Lambert told YachatsNews on Thursday that one of the specialities she has developed the past two decades of work is “coming in and helping with organizational dysfunction.” She credits working collaboratively, assessing staff and volunteers and asking “where people think things aren’t working” to help get organizations back on track.
Lambert graduated from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. in 2002 with a bachelor of arts degree. Her husband works at Rogue Brewing in Newport and they have two children attending Waldport High School.
“We’re just a normal south county family,” she told YachatsNews.
Expedited process
The approach with Lambert is quicker because the Yachats council has already spent months and several contentious meetings working on a city manager job description, manager expectations and hammering out a contract that it only voted 3-2 to offer to Dubie. Days later Dubie withdrew her application over the lack of support from Vaaler and O’Shaughnessey.
On Wednesday, the council said Lambert – who didn’t appear to be attending the online meeting — should go to the city’s website to look at that contract to see if it was acceptable or if she would propose changes. Among other things, that contract contained a salary offer of $90,000 a year with the possibility of a bonus after nine months and four weeks of annual vacation.
Stott said she hoped the council could “finalize this decision on the candidate” next week. Scott said the process needed to be done “as expeditiously as possible.”
There is an even greater sense of urgency to finding a city manager because the absence of deputy city recorder Kimmie Jackson, who is on leave, has left just two people in city hall working to keep up with many of the basics of running the city and members of the city’s four commissions growing impatient with projects not getting the attention they need.
In other business Wednesday, the council:
- Discussed returning one of its two monthly meetings to the evening, but put off any decision until staffing issues are resolved;
- Re-appointed Michael Hempen and Dean Schrock to the Parks & Commons Commission;
- Debated – but put off a decision until February — a smaller membership of the Finance Commission, which is supposed to do long-term financial planning and recommend capital improvement projects to the Budget Committee and council. It was mostly inactive last year because of city manager changes and did not meet as advertised Wednesday.
- Put off adopting council goals until its Feb. 3 meeting;
- Heard Stott urge the council to find someone in the community it could contract with to help Yachats get in line for millions of dollars in county, state and federal grants that will be coming via various infrastructure and aid programs in the next two years. “There’s money out there to be had,” she said. “We need a real discussion on this, and soon.”