Waldport council issues letter on its decision to remove mayor from office

To the editor:

From the Waldport City Council to our fellow citizens.

How and why did the City Council remove its mayor without a recall? What happened to make this drastic action necessary? We believe you deserve answers to your questions and concerns.

First, let’s put one issue aside – this was not planned. Many on our council had worked with the former mayor before when she served on the council four years ago. This was not about protecting our city manager. He was not involved other than to ensure we followed the law and process. This was about the incident and what followed.

On March 25, Mayor Lambert came to City Hall. She aggressively demanded staff follow her direction and created a hostile environment for them. That was unnecessary and unlawful. The act, as described in two letters of complaint and a supporting witness statement, violated the rules established under the city charter.

Many cities throughout Oregon have an almost identical law. Elected officials don’t get to boss staff around. Our staff did exactly the correct thing – they repeatedly directed the mayor to the city manager’s office. What the mayor demanded did not matter – that is our community law as established by the charter the citizens of Waldport adopted in 1996.

The council receives annual training on the charter — this year just a month before. The charter and our council rules guide how we must behave. Unfortunately, the mayor refused to follow the staff’s direction to follow our charter rule. Instead, she continued to escalate the situation until staff had to walk away from her.

We have never had an elected city official treat staff this way. What may seem like a minor incident is actually a serious legal concern. Hostile work environment complaints lead to staff leaving positions, to costly lawsuits against the city, and to a near stop in city operations.

In January each of us, including Mayor Lambert, swore to uphold the Waldport city charter and the Oregon and U.S. Constitutions. We take that pledge seriously.

Council members have an obligation to protect the city. To do this we use the expertise in our backgrounds and the professional counsel of the city attorney and our insurance carriers. So, we wanted answers. Mayor Lambert wrote a response expressing her concerns regarding a larger issue. But she also disparaged the staff, claimed they were safe from her beyond a glass barrier, and most importantly, did not apologize to the staff or even commit to follow the city charter. She showed no remorse, other than to make the issue about her, not the staff.

So, we first held a closed hearing about the actions the mayor took. At our hearing we asked the city attorney to advise us on what Oregon allows. He confirmed the mayor’s actions, assuming the truth of staff complaints, were a violation of the charter and advised us of our three options: do nothing, censure, or expel the mayor.

The mayor chose the option to have an open session to address the complaints. To begin that session we asked Ms. Lambert about how she saw her actions. She professed confusion about the rules, and asserted she tried to work with the council as a team. However, she never reached out to us at all. We wanted to understand what happened, but Ms. Lambert did not offer remorse for her actions or accept responsibility for them but instead pushed that off on others.

Details in the mayor’s answers to our questions also did not match the public record. She made untrue claims in her explanations of that day. Not subjective truths open to interpretation, rather objective verifiable facts for which her statements did not match the documented timeline. For example, she said that she was surprised to find the number of letters in her box – yet, email subject logs indicated that she not only received many of these letters previously but referenced them in contact with attorneys. And just a week before she was informed that the council’s rules require council permission to speak to an attorney on the city’s behalf. Again, not following the rules.

Importantly, all of this could have waited. The mayor had no reason to ignore the council rules and proceed without the council’s knowledge and approval. Repeatedly asked why she refused to follow the rules, she again pushed back.

We faced a tough choice – the consideration of the clear hostile environment created by the mayor and her unwillingness to be truthful and remorseful about it or even commit to following the city charter.

We believed of the options presented, doing nothing or a censure would have had no effect. It would not protect the city from lawsuits, from a staff walkout, or from the continued liability which the mayor created and seemed unwilling to take responsibility for. We felt that the most responsible thing for her to do would be to resign — allowing her the dignity of leaving by her choice. We asked if she would resign, so she could frame leaving council in her own way. Instead of recognizing that the council felt this way, she preferred to make us take direct and public action.

But that is what we were elected to do — make tough choices to protect the city and our staff. And to ensure that the citizens who voted us in are not saddled with the legal expenses created by an elected official violating the charter.

So, reluctantly, we voted. It was unanimous. All six of us.

We simply believed that Charter rule 21(g) had clearly been violated, and that due to the mayor’s continued response to the incident, that the best course of action for the city was to take this serious step. We did not do so lightly.

We understood many of you might be angry at first. We are six individuals from diverse backgrounds and life experiences who volunteer our time without pay for the betterment of the city. A kindergarten teacher, a coach, two small business owners (one retired, one a former cop), a chaplain for the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office and Central Coast Fire & Rescue who is retired military, and a journalist who taught media law at a university. On that day we made what each of us believe was the best decision we could for the city of Waldport.

Was it legal? Yes, our city attorney said it was. The mayor violated clearly violated Charter rule 21g. Many other cities have the same provision for expulsion of an elected official.

Was it the right decision? While Ms. Lambert’s history in Yachats certainly came up – it is not why we made the decision. We acted on what was in front of us. We acted to protect this city. We acted to protect our staff. And we acted after giving the mayor every opportunity to take this in a different direction. So, yes it was.

In summary, this was fundamentally about how we treat those who work daily to keep this city running smoothly — those not in power, but those simply trying to do their jobs.

We recognize that there are some who have an agenda right now counter to the city and the city manager. We recognize that this will create a lot more consternation on social media within the community for the short term. We chose to look at the longer term. We looked to how the city could get back to work. Back to building the playground and park, adding a sidewalk to the schools, taking back our market, replacing infrastructure and ensuring our water and sewer pipes flow. Back to saving the taxpayers money, as the city has done so successfully over the last few years, bringing in over $8 million in outside funding.

We hope that citizens can focus on moving forward with us. Focus on building. Focus on Waldport. That is what we intend to do. Look forward. Thank you.

• The Waldport City Council