Waldport mayor walks out of meeting after 35 minutes Thursday in audit protest, rest of council works for 3 hours

By GARRET JAROS/Lincoln Chronicle

WALDPORT ­– Waldport Mayor Heide Lambert attended the city council’s regularly scheduled meeting Thursday after missing last month’s session because of health concerns and to protest a host of issues.

Her return was short lived.

Lambert left Thursday’s meeting 35 minutes after it began, claiming there were ethics violations around reviewing the draft of a long-awaited city financial audit.

However, when the audience grew boisterous about Lambert’s threat to leave and then failed to heed her pleas for silence, she moved to adjourn the meeting. That attempt was quickly overturned by the council, which continued conducting business in a nearly three-hour meeting after the mayor walked out.

At the onset of Thursday’s meeting, Lambert moved to have the last item on the council’s agenda – reviewing a draft of the city’s overdue 2021 audit – to be the first topic of discussion. The auditor sent the draft to city officials for review and city manager Dann Cutter said it was shared with councilors as a courtesy so they could ask any questions before it is finished.

The city only received its 2020 audit due to disputes with a former firm which failed for several years to provide the required report. The city then struggled like many others to find certified municipal auditors to help catch up, before hiring Umpqua Valley Financial of Roseburg.

Lambert began by saying she heard that city officials “had a lot to say” on the city’s website about confusion over the draft audit but that she had not had time to read them.

She asked councilors whether they had received the draft from the auditors or just in the packet sent Monday to councilors and whether they had time to read it before Thursday’s meeting. Council members replied they did receive it in the packet and that yes, they had time to read it, with some spending hours combing through it.

“So we’ve only had it for less than 72 hours,” Lambert said before turning to Cutter to ask if the auditors were present in the room.

“No,” Cutter replied. “Why would they be?”

He then explained that it is simply a draft report given to the council because of the public scrutiny and criticism about the lack of progress and updates about when the audits would be completed. Normally, he said, the draft would only be reviewed internally by staff before being returned to the auditor to finish.

Cutter said the council could request to speak with the auditor after it is completed, but reminded them it is a document using four-year-old data.

“I’m not sure what information speaking with the auditor is going to get, but I would certainly not inhibit or prevent the council from inviting the auditor here and asking any question they so desire,” Cutter said.

He also described the 2021 audit as relatively boring with no malfeasance of any kind.

Lambert responded that she had not been given enough time to review the draft or the lengthy agenda packet. And she again questioned why no one — including the public and the chief petitioner of a council recall campaign – had not been allowed to speak with the auditor.

Her concerns were not shared by any other councilors.

Lambert also asked about the absence in the draft of a letter from the current auditor critical of the financial practices by Oregon Cascade West Council of Governments, which was managing finances for the city in 2021. Cutter replied that the letter comes with the completed audit and does not reflect on the city but on the agency which the city already took to task for its work.

“I’m under the belief that this draft of an audit is performative, because we’re not getting this from the auditor directly,” Lambert said. “It came from you. We didn’t get a chance to speak to the auditors about it, and it says there’s significant findings, whether or not it’s with you or not.”

Lambert added that she was suspicious that the council was not receiving everything and that in her previous work when there was a municipal audit it was sent to the entire council.

“And that’s exactly what happens when you get the final audit,” Cutter said. “We are trying to increase transparency for providing you the audit draft that would normally be only seen by the city manager and city finance manager.”

He added that it also gives councilors a chance to send questions to the auditors.

“If you’d rather not, madam mayor, have that transparency, we can certainly do it behind the scenes, which seems to be your preferred method,” Cutter said. “And then you can see the audit when the audit is finalized.”

Lambert said she did not want “copy and pasting of paragraphs” by Cutter, but everything sent by the auditor. City finance director Ellen Valentine spoke up from the audience to say the council received exactly what the auditor sent.

Lambert did not accept the answer and questioned why council did not get a copy of the draft when the city received it May 20 so they would have more time to review it. Cutter replied it was being reviewed by staff and was given to council at the earliest opportunity.

The draft audit is posted on the city’s website in the agenda packet.

Lambert again called the draft “performative.”

“I presume this is the audit,” Lambert said. “I don’t know. There’s literally no letterhead, nothing came from the auditors to the council.”

After a melee of councilors and the mayor all speaking at once, Councilor Jayme Morris raised her voice to be heard and addressed a comment by Lambert.

“This has nothing to do with the recall,” Morris said. “This is about getting the audit done that we’ve been trying to get done. We are not trying to cover anyone’s tracks.”

The six councilors are facing a recall election July 13 instigated by the mayor’s supporters who took issue with her removal by the council in April 2025 for breaking the city charter by trying to direct city employees. Councilors reinstated her a month later after a judge’s order.

Lambert responded by asking Morris not to raise her voice and to calm down, which lit a spark with some audience members who made loud, sarcastic comments aimed at Lambert, who then called for order.

In the end, Lambert disputed Cutter about how draft audits should be handled and then announced she had been advised if she found meetings to be unethical, she should leave. The audience jeered loudly and someone called out “There you go again” and “Just don’t give her the audit.”

“Please!” Lambert yelled above the uproar. “Order. Please. I am stating that I find this unethical. And I am told by the Oregon Ethics Commission that I am the facilitator of this meeting and if I find that I’m facilitating an unethical meeting … or believe it to be that I’m to object and I’m supposed to leave this meeting.”

She said the reasons she found it unethical is that she had less than 72 hours to review the agenda packet, did not hear directly from the auditor and did not believe it was a complete draft.

Members of the audience then encouraged her to leave before the mayor continued speaking.

“I’m not storming out, I’m not angry, I’m not even mad about any of this,” Lambert said. “I just think this could have been presented in a better way, so that our constituents would have felt more trust and more belief in what is happening at this table, other than what I feel is very performative. And is being done only because of a recall.”

“It’s performative that you’re walking out,” a woman in the audience said and then repeated to which Lambert finally responded “Thanks for your opinion!”

“You are supposed to be here for us!” the woman shouted back as Lambert began banging the gavel again, shouting for order and silence.

The woman repeated her call inviting the mayor to leave and that’s when Lambert moved to adjourn the meeting, which was quickly overridden by the six councilors. Lambert then walked out — with her objections quickly swallowed by applause from the raucous crowd.

Reda Eckerman, now curator of the Alsea Bay Bridge Interpretive Center after three decades as city recorder, then stood in the audience and waited for the crowd to grow silent.

“I would just like to clarify for the record that in the 31 years that I have worked for the city, this is the first time that a draft audit has been issued to the council,” she said.

At the end of the meeting, Cutter told councilors that it was clear to him that Lambert had moved the draft audit to the top of the long agenda so that if she objected to anything she could leave right away.

“We’ve been reaching out to her for two weeks just to confirm that she would be attending the meeting, and she does not respond to any staff requests,” Cutter told the Lincoln Chronicle. “If anything had come up where we needed the mayor, she has been absent for the entire time since the last meeting. She doesn’t respond to the city at all. And we had a lot of other important business she should absolutely have participated in.”

In other business the council:

• Chose to forego a 45-page slide show by city planner Jaime White on a proposed natural hazard mitigation plan that had been requested by Lambert, opting to instead hear a synopsis before they approved it. The plan identifies potential risks to a city, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides and major storms with the city developing projects designed to lessen those risks. The primary advantage of a mitigation plan is that it unlocks potential funding and grants.
• Approved a drinking water protection plan that works in the same way as the hazard mitigation plan.
• Approved the city manager to draft a new ordinance around Conex cargo containers in residential and commercial zones that will later be reviewed by council.

• Garret Jaros covers the communities of Yachats, Waldport, south Lincoln County and natural resources issues for Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at [email protected]