By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews
YACHATS – The Yachats city council hopes a special, 16-minute meeting Wednesday clears up any confusion over the city planner’s job – and maybe who holds it.
The council – with Mayor Craig Berdie conducting the meeting from home because of a positive Covid test and councilor Greg Scott online from Vietnam at 3 a.m. local time – took two votes to try to clarify concerns that cropped up after its meeting two weeks ago. On Wednesday, the council:
Voted 3-1 to rescind a motion it approved March 15 that cancelled a 2-year-old contract with Katherine Guenther to serve as both interim city manager and city planner. Ann Stott voted no, saying the vote wasn’t necessary, and Scott abstained because he didn’t attend the March 15 meeting;
Voted 5-0 to terminate the interim city manager/planner contract in 14 days and offer Guenther a position as a part-time planner.
It’s now up to city manager Heide Lambert – as the council made clear – to negotiate a new job description, pay, benefits and hours with Guenther.
Guenther attended Wednesday’s meeting – along with the rest of the city hall staff except for Lambert, who was on vacation – but didn’t address the council. She declined comment Thursday to YachatsNews. There were 10 people in the audience and at least nine attending online.
The whole thing is tied to the turnover and turmoil in Yachats City hall and council oversight issues that started nearly three years ago.
After a series of contract city planners, Guenther took on the role in March 2021 to work 16 hours a week at $27 an hour, costing the city about $1,850 a month. Two months later the council hired Guenther as interim city manager — but retaining her planning duties – at $7,000 a month and with full insurance and retirement benefits.
But that new contract had no end date. When Lambert was hired in February 2022 the former council thought it best that Guenther continue her interim manager/planner role to help the new manager with her transition.
With a year under her belt and help from an outside human relations/personnel consultant to re-establish city employee roles and job descriptions, Lambert indicated to the council that it was time for Guenther to return to just the planning job – if the details of hours, pay and benefits could be negotiated.
And thus the March 15 council vote.
But the council did not see the old contract at that meeting.
Then, Berdie and some councilors heard some concerns in the community that they were ending Guenther’s job entirely – not just renegotiating its terms.
Council president Mary Ellen O’Shaughnessey got a copy of the contract, read it and saw that it said if Guenther’s interim city manager/planner contract was ended, then she “will resume her position and duties as part-time planner.”
“We were not aware of that,” Berdie said at the start of Wednesday meeting.
But the soon-to-be-cancelled contract does not specify the planner’s hours, pay or benefits. That will now be up to Lambert and Guenther to try to work out.
Berdie and O’Shaughnessey said they hope that any confusion among the council and community is gone.
“I hope this clarifies the issue for the community,” Berdie said at the conclusion of the 16-minute meeting.
- Quinton Smith is the editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com
Katherine Guenther has saved Yachats throughout the years, always silently coaching, talking to, mediating people in this community. She stepped in as city manager because city hall was resembling a 1 ring flea circus. I hope she sticks around, we’re going to need it. Especially if the mayor has to have a 16 minute special meeting because he can’t do a little research and read a contract,