By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
YACHATS – When Heide Lambert starts her new job as Yachats city manager Monday, she’ll be walking into a building that has had three managers and a bare-bones staff the past 12 months.
Lambert will be facing a tsunami-sized wave of issues in a city where its four commissions want to start projects but are frustrated with inaction, a struggling staff and a council that hasn’t shown much in the way of leadership, cohesiveness or the ability to get much done.
“All of us are frustrated because this has been going on for so long,” Councilor Greg Scott said Wednesday during a joint meeting of the council and Parks & Commons Commission. But “… we need to be patient.”
There may not be much time even for that.
First, Lambert needs to get a handle on issues inside city hall – to the seemingly routine task of making sure bills are paid or getting contracts under way that have languished without signatures. Other issues, including staffing, will likely take several months to begin to resolve – especially when battling day-to-day emergencies that consume valuable time.
Lambert is also asking for patience.
“I’m going to start with the people in the trenches and go from there,” she told YachatsNews this week. “My first approach is to talk to the staff and then commissions.”
City hall has been trying to operate with just interim city manager Katherine Guenther, who also doubles as the city planner, and newly-hired clerk Dayna Capron. Just a year ago, there were 4-5 employees in city hall.
Deputy city recorder Kimmie Jackson, who had been with the city for 10 years, went on medical leave Dec. 22 and in late January served formal notice that she plans to sue the city for discrimination, hostile work environment, retaliation and defamation.
Anita Sites, who had worked for a year on contract as an administrative assistant but was let go during the first interim city manager’s last week, has filed a similar notice.
Neal Morphis, who is on a temporary contract through a labor firm and has some duties as facilities coordinator, has been working remotely from Seattle for more than a month, frustrating those who want someone on the ground to deal with daily facility issues and longer-term projects.
All that has laid daily emergencies and the smallest of chores at the feet of Guenther, who had barely started her planning job when she was asked last May to also be Yachats’ second interim manager.
While trying to get a handle on burgeoning planning issues and then the city manager’s job, Guenther has also had to learn everything from publishing the monthly newsletter, to running Zoom meetings, to helping – sometimes unsuccessfully – pay the city’s bills on time. All those jobs were done previously by clerks. She also spent a huge amount of time working with a council that badly fumbled its initial, months-long city manager search.
Last summer the council and Guenther agreed that she would stay on full-time for a month once a manager was hired to help with the transition. It is unclear whether that agreement is still in place.
Needs space, time
Lambert has worked the past two years as director of CASA of Lincoln and Tillamook Counties. She was one of three finalists for the Yachats job last summer but pulled out in the fall to deal with CASA staffing and budget issues. When those were resolved and Lambert heard that another finalist withdrew at the last minute in December, she re-applied.
The council quickly took her up on that offer, did another round of interviews – and two weeks ago offered her a two-year contract that pays $90,000 a year.
Lambert lives in Waldport with her husband, who is head of pub maintenance for Rogue Brewing in Newport, and two teenage daughters. On Thursday, she resigned from the Waldport City Council, to which she had been elected in 2020.
Staying on the council, Lambert said Thursday at the end of the Waldport meeting “would not be best for either city” referencing the time commitment she will need to make in Yachats.
One of the Waldport council’s 2021-22 goals, which it reviewed Thursday, is to establish more partnerships. That may now include Yachats.
“I look forward to a fruitful partnership,” said city manager Dann Cutter.
While Lambert had overseen four small nonprofit organizations in Lincoln County and served on the Waldport planning commission and council, she has not been a city manager.
In public interviews she described herself as an empathic listener and problem solver who can also make the hard decisions. She also prides herself on being highly scheduled and organized.
“I want to be approachable but I need to get some stuff done,” she told YachatsNews, and asking for time to “get my footing.”
During a Yachats council discussion last week on what they should do to help Lambert, at least three councilors and Guenther said to simply leave her alone for awhile.
Councilor Anthony Muirhead the council needs to let Lambert build a foundation and “get city hall right, which is our priority.”
Guenther asked the council to let Lambert and her develop a transition plan and “time to figure out the priorities in house.”
“There’s going to be a lot of people who want five minutes of her time because I have not been generous with my five minutes,” Guenther said. “But the multiplier is 12 – five minutes is really an hour here.”
Councilor Mary Ellen O’Shaughnessey said the council needs to “leave them alone.”
“We just need to sit back and trust Heide and Katherine …” she said.
Lots to do
But there is a lot to tackle. Even some basics.
Because of Jackson’s sudden departure in December, some bills were not paid until early January, drawing complaints from vendors and contractors. Employee checks were late by a day; state retirement contributions were not authorized for three months.
A contractor ready to paint the Commons’ interior in late January has not been able to start because their council-approved contract has not been signed. A contractor lined up to repair the Little Log Church needed a letter of intent in January in order to schedule work this summer. He still has not received it, putting the work in jeopardy.
A contract with a lawyer to serve as Yachats’ municipal judge, which the previous council approved in 2020, fell through in 2021 and no one has been hired to serve that role. That meant that someone if someone was cited for improper excavating or illegal vacation rental use – to use two examples – they could not be forced to appear in municipal court.
Code enforcement has all but fallen by the wayside as the city’s Newport-based contractor struggled with personnel issues.
Despite the promise last fall to resume taking and publishing minutes of city meetings, that has not been put into place. Others have complained of not getting regular city manager reports, reports on projects in process, or the city’s financial snapshots that the council has repeatedly asked for.
Commissions step up
The result of chaos in city hall has meant that the city’s four commissions have taken on larger roles, doing much of their own planning, research and basic work on projects before handing them off to city staff. But they often stall out in the city manager’s office or at the council level.
“It’s just been a dead-end; nothing happens,” said a person in close contact with city hall who asked for anonymity to speak candidly and for fear of retaliation. “It’s like driving high speed in a fog … and everybody’s frustrated.”
Luckily, there is unanimous agreement that the four commission chairs and their members are among the strongest in years and united on projects.
The Library Commission – with the volunteer help of two architects in town – has done most of its own work on a proposed expansion and proposal to hire a part-time librarian.
The Parks & Commons Commission had to find the Commons’ would-be painters themselves, has done much of the work on two pocket parks along Ocean View Drive, sought out landscape architects for proposals for the big grass field behind city hall – but is worried they will stall once funding needs to be authorized and project management is turned over to the city.
The city’s trails committee, which falls under Parks & Commons, has taken it upon itself to work with a volunteer architect from Eugene to plan what could be a $750,000 to $1 million boardwalk overlooking the Yachats River.
“The council needs to trust, not micro-manage,” one commission member said.
The Public Works & Streets Commission has combined and refined three capital projects lists into one document that outlines what it believes should be infrastructure spending priorities. But it has not been able to get the council to focus and proceed on what nearly everyone has continually said should be a top priority – water supply and security.
And, the city’s Finance Committee – which was designed to take a long-term look at Yachats’ revenue and expenses — has met only once in the past year. The council changed that committee’s membership last week in an attempt to give it more focus, especially on capital projects and recommendations to the budget committee.
In its meeting with the council Wednesday, Parks & Commons Commission members said they are trying to work through a three-year backlog of projects, but the city still hasn’t approved a supplemental budget that was supposed to be done in December which would commit the city to actually begin some of them.
In addition to strong commissions, if there is other good news, it’s that:
- The city’s finances are exceptionally strong – fueled by near-record lodging taxes and having spent little on personnel or projects;
- Public works employees have largely stayed away from the city hall chaos and continue to keep water running and wastewater treated;
- And, for all its dysfunction, council members seem to be well-meaning and well-intentioned, with few personal agendas but for the most part inexperienced in government and in need of staff help and guidance.
Operations come first
There is hope that within 3-6 months Lambert can begin to sort out city hall operational issues, help bring structure to communication between commissions, staff and the city council, and get some projects under way.
Councilor Ann Stott, who is widely expected to run for mayor in November, said last week that a lot of issues stemmed from the council’s “own dysfunction” and asked that Yachats residents begin to look forward rather than dwell on the past.
“This council has failed on many of its responsibilities the past year,” she said last week. “We need to look forward now. If in six months these problems still exist, then come after my head.”
Lambert says she hopes it won’t come to that.
“I’m grateful to the council to give me some space,” she told YachatsNews. “It will be better in time, but harder at first.”
- Quinton Smith, a longtime Oregon journalist, is the founder and editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com
Very good article, a helpful public briefing. Patience is a given. It doesn’t eliminate the need for actions, many of which take less than minutes — like signing a letter or a contract. Heide will do well to trust the work that has been done by the commissions and voted upon by the council. Sit down with a pen for the first half-an-hour and sign what has already been approved. That will move things along nicely.
I am glad she self-identifies as an organized person; that will help as well. Personnel problems are hideously time-consuming, but they should not be all-consuming. I hope she can “keep her eye on the ball,” which is everything else, other than the grievance lawsuits.
Sorry to hear that about Miss Jackson. I hope we will hear more on that. Sounds like Miss Lambert will have her hands full and a lot to untangle. Can’t say I envy her. I’m exhausted just thinking about it. How exactly did it get this bad? Anyone else concerned that a person close to city hall feels the need to speak anonymously for fear of retaliation? That’s not very reassuring, but I get it.
At some point it might be healthy to discuss all the Yachats City Council and other departments have actually accomplished. It seems many choose to judge and complain while gratitude is in short supply. These are volunteers and receive no pay and serve for the good of our precious town.