By KENNETH LIPP/YachatsNews
YACHATS – In its first meetings of the new year — and the last return to in-person meetings for any public agency in Lincoln County — Yachats City Council got a 90-minute crash-course on the legalities of elected office and swore in a new mayor and councilor.
Ross Williams of Eugene, the city’s contracted attorney, led the hour-and-a-half work session in the Yachats Commons civic room Thursday morning, during which he outlined the roles and duties of city councilors under the city charter, ethics rules and public meeting laws.
It was the council’s first in-person meeting in two years. There were two members of the public in the audience and about 20 observing online in the city’s new hybrid meeting format.
Williams stressed that councilors had little power outside of their one of five votes, other than duties approved by a majority of the council, and the mayor had the limited additional duties of presiding over meetings and signing documents for the city. The city’s insurance policy would not pay for a councilor or staff member’s attorney if they were acting outside of their duties and incurred a lawsuit, Williams said.
Councilors needed to be clear about what “hat” they are wearing when making statements in public, the attorney said — were they speaking as a private individual or a representative of the city government?
The presentation was preceded by a swearing-in ceremony. City manager Heide Lambert administered the oath of office to new mayor Craig Berdie, and Berdie then gave the oath to new councilor Catherine Whitten-Carey and incumbent Mary Ellen O’Shaughnessey, who was appointed in 2020 and won election last November.
Berdie, a retired data and project management professional from Minnesota, is Yachats’ fourth mayor in eight years.
Following the attorney’s tutorial, the mayor gaveled in a brief regular session to take public input and schedule a goal-setting workshop for 1 p.m. Friday, Jan. 13. He asked other councilors to bring a list of their own priorities for discussion.
Berdie ran on a platform of getting stalled projects underway, and in the city’s January newsletter, he offered eight expectations for the next two years, detailing two items.
“We need to have solid plans for providing sufficient water as the city grows and the climate changes,” Berdie wrote. To accomplish that, as well as ensure supply during dry months, the new mayor proposed creating a “water committee” to evaluate potential new sources. That committee idea was rejected by Lambert and the previous council last year.
The mayor also proposed creating easy-to-read reports available on the city website to help residents understand the work done by city staff, restoring the Little Log Church Museum, and completing already approved projects such as pocket parks on Ocean View Drive and safety delineators on U.S. Highway 101.
Councilor Ann Stott, Berdie’s opponent in the November election, said she would focus on two issues — emergency preparedness and the city’s lighting ordinance, which she called toothless. Earlier in the meeting, in her last act as council president, Stott nominated O’Shaughnessey to succeed her.
“I believe there is one item we need to do as a community, and that is the mapping of neighborhoods,” Stott said. She said knowing who and what is around you in the event of a disaster would be crucial information for survival.
As Stott expounded on the point, Berdie interjected to ask her if she intended to make a motion.
“Oh there is, and I’ll get to it,” she said. “I want to see us as a council make this a priority, to get this community mapped.”
Stott said she realized the lighting ordinance was ineffective when she filed a formal complaint against a hotel over its parking lot lights. After she waited two years for the city to hire a code officer, Stott said, the officer used a meter to check the light level and determined it did not violate the ordinance.
Controversial due to a proposed ban on marine lighting that became a marine lighting curfew when adopted in March 2021, Yachats’ lighting ordinance mostly focuses on “trespass lighting” that spills from one property onto another.
“If those lights are not in violation of our lighting ordinance, then we have a problem,” Stott said. “And we have to address our street lights as well,” which she said are the biggest light violators but exempted from the rules.
“We need to have the planning commission address the issue of lighting, and we need to either put some teeth in this ordinance, or we need to repeal the ordinance,” she said.
Berdie asked councilors to send their lists of priorities to Lambert. He said he also wanted suggestions for agenda topics to create a roadmap for future meetings.
- Kenneth Lipp is YachatsNews’ full-time reporter and can be reached at KenLipp@YachatsNews.com
