By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
The Yachats City Council kicked off the new year Thursday with a nearly four-hour meeting, swearing in three new members, deciding on a timetable for appointing a fifth member, and promptly wading in to the contentious and long-running issue of city staffing.
Leslie Vaaler took the oath of office as mayor, then swore in Ann Stott and Greg Scott as new councilors. All won election in November, unseating Mayor John Moore and Councilors Max Glenn and Jim Tooke.
Vaaler’s move to mayor leaves two years remaining on her four-year council term. The council decided to immediately advertise for people to serve out her term, setting a deadline of 1 p.m. Jan. 22 for applications and scheduling a selection on Jan. 29.
Applications will be available on the city’s website.
The council also selected Stott as council president, who would preside over meetings in the absence of the mayor.
Vaaler announced that she would discontinue having the council president join regular meetings between the mayor and city manager to go over city issues and council agendas, a practice started by Moore. Instead she suggested rotating councilors through those meetings, when appropriate. That move was applauded Thursday by the rest of the council.
Staffing, organization again
But the longest and most complicated discussion Thursday involved staffing – and more recent proposals by City Manager Shannon Beaucaire to hire three people, including an administrative assistant, a city planner and someone to handle finances.
The former council in December approved going ahead with advertising the administrative assistant position, now being filled under a temporary contract by Anita Stites. But after pushback from incoming council members, it left further discussions and any decisions on personnel and staff organization to the new council.
The city has struggled with planning services since the retirement almost three years ago of Larry Lewis. It now contracts with the Oregon Cascades West Council of Governments, but that agency wants to trim back a $6,100-a-month contract to 10- to 12 hours a week and much of that done remotely.
Finance duties are also handled under contract by the Albany-based agency, which Beaucaire championed for two years but now wants to bring back in house.
Scott, who campaigned in part on hiring a finance director, said the council should put off personnel discussions until it compares organizational charts drawn up in 2015 when Yachats moved to the city manager/council form of government and one proposed by Beaucaire in November. He also said moving ahead with the administrative assistant “was premature,” indicating that the city manager should be handling many of those duties.
All of the personnel decisions, he said, have a bearing on council expectations of the city manager. Beaucaire is a finalist for the city manager’s job in the Willamette Valley community of Carlton, whose council is expected to make a decision next Friday.
Scott said he wants a city manager more involved in researching and writing reports, delving into issues, details and doing other “hands on work.”
“I think things are a little out of kilter and I think it’s something the council needs to have a discussion about,” he said.
This is Scott’s second time on the Yachats council. He was on the City Council for 11 years before resigning in July 2018 after disagreements over the direction of that council and with clashes with Beaucaire.
Code enforcement, planning again
But after deciding that Beaucaire could proceed with the first round of administrative assistant interviews, the council dropped in to the long-running discussions and debates over hiring a planner and someone to handle code enforcement.
After running through several local contracts for code enforcement, the city for the past year has been using TCB Security of Newport to do that work two days a week.
Council members said they would prefer hiring someone – either on contract or as an employee – connected to the community and who could focus on more than just responding to complaints, which tend to be seasonal, and establish long-term relationships with residents and businesses.
“I don’t want the code enforcement to be wanna-be cops,” riding around in patrol cars that look like police cruisers, said Stott, referring to TCB Security.
Councilor Mary Ellen O’Shaughnessey, agreed, saying the position – with broadened duties to handle all the details of vacation rentals – could be 30 hours a week.
“We, historically, have not gotten this right,” she said.
The discussion over planning was similarly circular.
Vaaler said she talked with the chair and vice chair of the Planning Commission, who felt the city needed a planner two days a week.
Stott said it was “totally unrealistic” to think that a city the size of Yachats needed a full-time planner. She suggested having someone handle the nuts and bolts of the job two days a week and empowering citizens, commissions and the council to do long-range work.
O’Shaughnessey said it was important to have a planner in the city, expressing concern about the cuts in hours by the CoG’s planner. She also asked, again, for finance comparisons of the various jobs and positions.
The council reached no conclusions, and after 90 minutes of that discussion during the workshop portion of its meeting scheduled a special meeting for 10 a.m. Friday, Jan. 15 to discuss staff organization and personnel.
In other business, the council:
- Delayed a proposal by Stott to reopen the Commons building “immediately” to local groups for exercise, yoga and other group classes, letting class organizers and people decide whether to participate. Stott said the city could follow the risk categories for Lincoln County, which allow gyms to operate in the “high” risk category but are closed when they reach the “extreme” category.
- Agreed on a 3-1 vote to give Scott administrative access to the city’s document database, so he could do research, see what needs to be updated, and be able to show other councilors how to search and what to do with everything from property records, zoning, tax income and similar data. “In order to see the problem you need good information,” said Scott, who spent 10 years setting up the city’s former computer system and many of its processes. Vaaler voted against the motion, saying she needed to better understand the issue.
- Discussed ways – but made no decisions – to communicate better with the city’s four commissions and to make sure they understood their role, duties and what they are responsible for. Most of the commissions went through that process last year, writing out several documents outlining their responsibilities – but apparently there is still confusion on some commissions or uncertainty on the council. Stott provided a chart she created, proposing lines of communication and authority, saying the city manager and staff should provide information to the commissions “but then step back.”
