By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
The city of Yachats’ slow re-opening of the Commons this week has come to an abrupt halt after the community services coordinator resigned and the city ended its contract with an administrative assistant — two of four full-time staffers in City Hall.
On Monday, the city announced it was initiating a soft re-opening of the Commons to small, local groups, directing them to reserve times for the multipurpose room and giving them other instructions for using it.
On Tuesday, interim City Manager Lee Elliott notified City Council members of the inability to open the Commons because of staffing issues.
Community Services Coordinator Heather Hoen went on vacation May 13 and submitted her resignation May 18, after almost one year in the job. She had previously managed facilities under a contract with the city.
Hoen’s responsibilities for the city had increased the past 10 months as she restarting stalled city projects, tackled new ones and began handling other duties prior to the departure of former city manager Shannon Beaucaire.
Hoen told YachatsNews that office dysfunction, the lack of specific job descriptions, and the inability of city managers to deal with or correct personnel issues led to her departure.
Hoen said she is going to work at Yachats Brewing + Farmstore and helping owner Nathan Bernard with a recently purchased farm up the Yachats River.
On Wednesday, Elliott cancelled the contract with an employment agency that had Anita Sites working in City Hall as an administrative assistant for the past year. Sites had started a previously scheduled three-week leave on Monday and was traveling across the country to a family gathering.
Sites did a wide variety of tasks around the office, including posting items to the city’s website, editing and designing the monthly newsletter, clerical chores and answering the phone and email inquiries.
Elliott and Mayor Leslie Vaaler did not respond to requests from YachatsNews to comment on the departures or how the city intends to conduct much of its day-to-day business, including the plans to reopen the Commons.
The two departures come at an already chaotic time for city staff and the council.
Elliott, who arrived in late March to be interim city manager, is leaving June 3 for a new job in his home state of Texas. The council has promoted city planner Katherine Guenther, who has been in that part-time job for two months, to take Elliott’s place – and to also continuing the planning work.
Longtime financial consultant and volunteer Tom Lauritzen has been hired on an hourly contract to do day-to-day finance work handled the past three years by Albany-based Oregon Cascades West Council of Governments until the city can find a person to do that job. But the council has been unable to finalize a job description and advertise for that position.
Lauritzen told the budget committee Thursday that the Coos Bay-based employment agency that handled Sites’ contract told he and Elliott that “there is nobody on the coast with accounting skills” available to them.
The city’s staffing issues came up repeatedly – without any resolution – Thursday during an 6-hour meeting of the budget committee, which is made up of the five council members and five citizens.
Lauritzen, who was primarily responsible for putting together the proposed budget for 2021-22, and Elliott did not put money in the budget to pay for a new community services coordinator or an administrative assistant. Instead, they allocated money into an area of the budget to pay for temporary workers to potentially handle some of that work.
In addition to finding a new city manager, the council still needs to figure out how it wants personnel at City Hall to be organized.
