By KENNETH LIPP/YachatsNews
YACHATS — During a crowded meeting Wednesday, the Yachats City Council began plotting a course to keep municipal projects moving as well as maintaining basic services with the upcoming departure of its city manager and several key city hall staff.
Most of Wednesday’s agenda was prompted by the April 6 bombshell that city manager Heide Lambert would leave May 31 after giving 60 day’s notice. She had held the job 14 months.
That announcement capped a growing feeling of deja vu at city hall with the resignation of four city staffers — all temporary hires, but some in their roles for more than a year performing critical functions. Before Lambert’s arrival, the city endured a trying period with no full-time manager and at times no capacity to complete utility billing or answer phones, a trend that continued into Lambert’s tenure as she struggled to get staffing and operations back on track.
Despite calls from one councilor and some members of the public to pay out and end the city manager’s contract immediately, Lambert said she’s committed to aiding in the transition that other councilors and the mayor say she is critical to completing successfully.
Keeping the lights on
Mayor Craig Berdie asked Lambert what, if any, service interruptions should be expected after four city hall workers quit during the previous month.
Lambert said the most essential role now unfilled was the utility biller. Dayna Capron, who was hired through an employment agency a year ago as office manager and learned to handle utility bills, resigned April 10. That followed her public appeal to the council to resume the process of hiring her and three other temporary workers as full-time employees with benefits, a process she was told was stalled by unspecified budget concerns.
“I’m working with Florence’s utility biller who thinks they can come and help us,” Lambert said. “And then also Kimmie (Jackson) has offered to help as well because she has years of experience doing that for the city.”
Jackson, the deputy city recorder, has a pending tort notice against the city, and an Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industry investigator recently recommended her civil rights complaint against Yachats be dismissed. Among claims of harm in the complaint was that some of Jackson’s duties, including utility billing, had been wrongly taken away from her.
“Is there anybody that’s answering the telephone?” Berdie asked. Lambert said remaining staff was sharing that task.
Remaining in city hall are contract planner Katherine Guenther, who is scheduled to go back to a 16-hour work week, Jackson and Diane Grover, who was working as a temporary employee handling payroll, accounts payable and some other finances until she was officially hired as a city employee last week.
“We are in a transition that I’m hoping that within the next two weeks we’ll be fine,” Lambert said. She said a new receptionist is set to start Monday. Lorraine Barrett, who’d been working under contract as a receptionist and administrative assistant, resigned April 4.
Lambert said she was more concerned with supervision of employees once she leaves May 31.
Transition
During last week’s regular meeting, councilors agreed that the mayor should explore options for a consultant who would work alongside Lambert until her last day, then take the reins under the “interim city manager” moniker June 1 until a permanent replacement is found. The city intends to contract with a third-party consultant to recruit that replacement.
Berdie said he’d had contact with three potential consultants through the League of Oregon Cities and one through the Lane Council of Governments.
Only one of the remaining potential candidates was available on the city’s timeframe, Berdie said. She was a former city manager in West Linn, Mt. Angel, Sisters and elsewhere and said she was interested in the position.
Further council discussion on specific candidates will likely take place in executive session until councilors make decisions on items such as salary. Councilor Greg Scott said he thought it was critical that Lambert had a high degree of comfort with whomever is hired and thus she should be a part of those discussions.
“These two individuals need to be prepared to work together, so I think (Lambert) needs to be included,” he said.
But …
Before he moved on to the subject of the transition, Berdie said he was going to open the floor to the public who’d asked to address the city’s staffing issues.
“This seems entirely out of order,” councilor Ann Stott said, but Berdie insisted it was not.
Councilor Catherine Whitten-Carey, who was joining the meeting via Zoom, suggested discussing a transition hire first before taking public comment. Following that discussion, she brought the issue back to the floor.
“This is difficult to say,” Whitten-Carey said. “Multiple citizens have reached out just in conversation and are otherwise just really having a feeling that, with all due respect, Heide needs to just go on her way, and we need to close that book, and let Heide get the money she needs and just end it clean.”
Berdie said he’d heard that sentiment.
“My position is that we have critical work to do that Heide is privy to,” he said. “I think that we need to use her to the best of our abilities in the interim. I understand the concerns … But we need to conduct the city’s business.”
Scott concurred with the mayor, saying Lambert’s knowledge of ongoing legal issues needs to be transferred to someone new.
Whitten-Carey said there was a reason the city has lost all but a few of its staff in the past month and she felt that Lambert should not do any more hiring.
Scott pointed out that the city’s voter-approved charter gave the city manager hiring power.
“I think until voters say otherwise, we need to respect that,” he said.
Berdie said he thought it was a reasonable request that Lambert avoid permanent hires, and she previously said she would only hire temporary workers to maintain city operations. The mayor then opened the floor to public comment.
Yachats resident Helen Anderson said she wanted to push more about the peril of retaining Lambert any longer. Anderson was a finalist along with Lambert and another candidate for the city manager position in 2021 before Lambert withdrew her application. Council offered the job to the other finalist, who then also withdrew her application over council’s handling of the hiring process.
“My concern is that if you have a building burning down, you want to put out the fire when you can,” Anderson said.
“You don’t want a person who is angry or afraid for their own safety making important decisions on behalf of the city,” she said, likely referring to Lambert’s resignation letter that continuing to work at city hall as opposed to from home might open her up to legal action.
Anderson also said the work environment at city hall was toxic, and she thought Jackson and Guenther might be able to step in for a couple of months until an interim manager is brought in.
George Mazeika said he’s lived in Yachats for 12 years, and his concern is the lack of continuity he’s observed through successive councils, mayors and city managers.
“Every new organization tries to do something different, and everything that’s been done gets thrown out the window,” he said. “Things need to be done properly, and don’t do them because you’re desperate to get someone in the position. Let’s get this right and let’s start creating something to ensure that the city never has to go through this ever again.”
Commenting via Zoom, Adobe Resort general manager and former city councilor Anthony Muirhead said current city hall staff were being faced with questions they did not know the answers to. If Lambert is to remain city manager, he said, she should be required to come to city hall to deal with issues.
The planner
In yet another staffing issue, Planning Commission chair John Theilacker commented on a memo from the commission to the council regarding the reduction in Guenther’s hours from 32 to 16 per week. The commission said they were concerned with the “risk to the city by failing to meet state-mandated deadlines for actions on pending and future land use applications.”
Theilacker also said the reduction in hours instituted by Lambert seemed to walk back a unanimous 2021 city council decision finding 16 hours was insufficient to complete all necessary planner tasks.
Lambert said the reduction reflected the end of Guenther’s contract as interim city manager, which the previous council left in place to assist Lambert during her first year.
Berdie said the council could make recommendations to the city manager regarding an employee’s hours “if work isn’t being done” but cannot mandate them.
Scott said the city needed to have a comprehensive look at the costs of staffing, including new positions proposed in the 2022-23 budget — and have a long-term forecast for its general fund — to know whether it could shoulder the cost of doubling Guenther’s hours or adding any other positions. He said the general fund was already “being hit in ways that constrain our ability to act flexibly.”
The council ultimately deferred further discussion on the matter to upcoming meetings of the Budget Committee.
It is way past time for Lambert to go and continuing her involvement with hiring or really running anything to do with City matters is poor judgement by both Berdie and Scott. Whitten-Carey said it right “Heide needs to just go on her way, and we need to close that book…”