By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
The Yachats City Council has announced its two finalists for city manager – a well-known former city contractor and Planning Commission member who moved here nine years ago and the former executive director of a $10 million a year nonprofit serving developmentally disabled adults who moved here in July.
Gretchen Dubie, who led the Oregon Supported Living Program in Eugene for 12 years, will interview with the council, staff and commission chairs on Thursday, Oct. 14.
Helen Anderson, who has been on the Planning Commission for eight years and worked for four years as a contractor taking minutes of meetings, doing the city newsletter and helping develop the city website, will interview Friday, Oct. 15.
The council is still trying to determine the time and day – likely a Saturday — for the public to meet and question the two candidates.
“We hope to find someone we can go forward with,” Mayor Leslie Vaaler said during a council meeting Thursday when the two finalists and partial schedule were announced.
The city has had two interim managers – the current is Katherine Guenther, who is also the city planner — since the departure of Shannon Beaucaire in late March.
The council took months to launch its own manager search and got 14 applications when it did this summer. They winnowed that down to seven, and then conducted Zoom interviews with four. Vaaler said Thursday that a third finalist dropped from consideration after being invited to interview.
The city plans to post the two candidates’ resumes and cover letters on its website Friday.
Anderson has a doctorate in philosophy and a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Duke University. She has been an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Arizona, an engineer for Westinghouse, a project manager various organizations in Tucson, and a strategic planning consultant. She went to work as a legal assistant in the office of a Waldport attorney after leaving as a city contractor in 2020. She is also the founder and board president of Yachats Pride.
“We all know Yachats is a unique and wonderful place,” Anderson said in her cover letter to the council when she applied for the position. “A creative thinker and insightful manager can implement the goals of Council and create an office environment that echoes the factors that draw us to this location. I can be the hands-on manager to transition this organization from surviving to thriving as we progress through the coming decade, facing the realities of climate change, COVID recovery, and workforce adaptations around demand and housing needs.
“My career has given me a multidimensional foundation of understanding business operations, organizations, and strategic planning. It would be incredibly gratifying to use that experience to re-establish City Hall as an efficient, happy, and professional workplace.”
Dubie has 27 years experience in executive and leadership roles in social services. She spent the last 12 as executive director of the Eugene-based program that provides services for 89 adults with disabilities in 18 group homes. It has 200 unionized employees, an eight-member board.
Dubie told YachatsNews that her family has been coming to Yachats for decades. She began working remotely after she and her husband, who works at the Angell Job Corps Center, bought a house just north of Yachats last October. She resigned her Eugene position in July.
“My strength lies in my interpersonal skills, allowing me to successfully interact with a broad and diverse community,” she said in her application’s cover letter. “I am very much a team player, and I can galvanize support for achieving common goals and have a knack for making things happen … . I am not afraid to speak my mind in a tactful and respectful way and set boundaries and priorities where needed.
“I understand that as City Manager, I am the sounding board for the community’s ideas, concerns and visions for the direction of the beautiful city of Yachats, working in collaboration with the volunteer committees and the city council to ensure a safe, vibrant and flourishing city. Through my extensive event management experience, I have worked with thousands of volunteers and value their contributions to the success of all projects. I also understand that there will be many moments where ideas and visions may not align with all people’s ideas or needs, and I know it is important for people to be heard and listened to no matter where it lands, and I know educating the community on why decisions are made and being open minded to new ideas and opportunities is paramount in a position like this.
The council did not set a timetable for making a selection. Councilor Greg Scott is out of town for nine days later this month.
I can’t help but wonder what’s happened to the leadership in Yachats? Constantly changing meetings, no mayor’s message in the newsletter, a huge tax proposed from the fire department with, at best, a questionable relationship between the chief, her ex-husband and their ownership of the ambulance. The chief instead of retiring, is still working, and there’s another person being paid salary alongside her, not instead of her. There are no meeting minutes from the fire department. Recently, the idea of building “a hotel” in wetlands. No communication from “the powers that be” is starting to be suspicious.
Two great candidates for city manager. Tough choice.
Another embarrassment for Yachats. It’s been seven months since the previous city manager left and these are the best candidates the Council could find? I mean no disrespect to the two finalists, they clearly have impressive professional experience, but just as impressive professional experience in business or the nonprofit sector wouldn’t automatically make someone qualified to be a dentist it similarly does not make one automatically qualified to be a city manager.
At this point I can’t tell if it’s arrogance or incompetence but this council is developing a pattern of selecting unqualified individuals to fill city positions that require experienced professionals. These finalists mirror the situation with Katherine Guenther. I commend Katherine for stepping up to the plate and helping the city during a time in need, but city planning is a profession like any other, and that position should be filled by someone with a formal education (most city planners will have a Master’s in City Planning) who has dedicated their career to the planning field. It’s hubris to think that just because someone has worked in real estate and volunteered on the planning commission they are aware of what is required from a professional planning role.
The same seems to be true about the finalists the council has settled on. As I stated before, both candidates have impressive experience, but what the city desperately needs is someone who actually knows how to do the job. No one on the Yachats City Council has any experience working in local government and the city is currently so shorthanded that there’s hardly even any city staff who could help provide guidance and basic city governance education to either of these candidates. Yachats cannot afford a new City Manager with a steep learning curve, the blind leading the blind is a scenario destined to fail.
I am asking the Yachats City Council to finally treat city government positions as the legitimate professions that they are, do the work to find qualified candidates who have devoted their lives to city governance and accordingly have the relevant education and experience we so desperately need. You wouldn’t hire an engineer without an engineering background or a dentist with no dental experience, so why do we think we can hire city managers and city planners with no direct experience in the field? End this arrogance, the residents of Yachats deserve better.