By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
Lee Elliott is a positive guy.
You can hear it in his voice. You can see it as he waves his hands around as he talks.
And, after three short weeks as Yachats’ interim city manager, he thinks city residents should be a bit more positive as well.
The city provides good water and wastewater services to its 750 residents and 25 or so businesses. It doesn’t have to deal with the much more attention-getting police or fire departments, which routinely deal in life-and-death matters. City employees are good, they care and are hungry for direction.
And, most of all, Yachats finances are very strong and its problems are relatively small and mostly solvable.
“You live in a very safe community … and the quality of life is good,” Elliott told the City Council last week and in a followup interview with YachatsNews. “The community cares. You have a lot of committees and volunteers – and that’s good.”
Elliott became interim city manager March 22, replacing Shannon Beaucaire who left after 3½ years to become city manager in the Willamette Valley community of Carlton.
Elliott, 46, has spent the past six years specializing in dropping into cities in need – public works, economic development, human resources or administration – in Texas, Arkansas, Arizona and Oregon. Elliott, whose permament resident is in Texarkana, Texas, ended a seven-month job in February as interim public works director in the Texas-Mexico border town of Del Rio.
Maybe it takes an outsider experienced in municipal government to remind locals they live in wonderful, small community, to re-energize staff, to help a new City Council find its footing – and to complete some long-running projects.
Focus on the character of the community, he told the council last week.
“Character is important … and how do you keep that?” he asked. “One way is for the city to keep providing good service.”
Talking with council and staff
Elliott has spent the first weeks meeting individually with councilors and staff, then in groups with staff. He’s trying to establish internal processes, standard operating procedures, and clear direction, regular communication and oversight of staff – something an outside review by Councilor Mary Ellen O’Shaughnessy and longtime finance volunteer Tom Lauritzen found lacking during one-on-one interviews with seven staff members after Beaucaire left.
That drew critical comments from council members last week. Councilor Ann Stott said she was “appalled” at the lack of standard operating procedures for staff. O’Shaughnessey felt the city was “left behind” on the standing of projects and grants. Councilor Greg Scott said he believed there was a “failure of implementation” of the capital improvement process in developing budgets.
Scott also urged the creation of simple, “readily available” documents showing the city’s current cash balances, something Beaucaire or the city’s contracted finance workers would not or could not do.
“Are we headed in a positive direction or a negative direction … we don’t know,” he said.
A key personnel decision looming for the council is the struggle to finish work on posting the job for an accountant or finance director that wasn’t finished, as expected, before Beaucaire left. Once filled, Elliott said, that position will determine how much of the rest of city hall staff functions.
Elliott started the interim job right at the beginning of the city’s 2021-22 budget process and much of his focus the next few months will be on that. The budget, he told the council, provides “your goals for the year.”
Elliott also said there needs to be a clear, consistent and improved communication process, both internally and with the community. The long list of projects the city has under way also needs to be clearly communicated and constantly updated as to their status.
Elliott told the council last week that the number of projects Yachats is tackling would be hard enough for a city five times its size. “But you need to finish some projects,” he said.
City manager search?
But what is less than clear is the future of any search for a permanent city manager.
During his initial job interview and later, Elliott said he could be interested in Yachats’ permanent position but stressed that his main job over the next three to six months is to stabilize operations so the transition to a new manager is as smooth as possible.
But the council is undecided what to do next.
Last week, Stott said the council should finish the city manager’s job description and begin what is usually a long advertising, recruiting and hiring process. If Elliott is part of that, great, she said, but the city can’t operate “under the assumption” that he will want to stay.
But Scott and Mayor Leslie Vaaler said they hoped the city could entice Elliott to stay.
Last week, Elliott encouraged the council to begin looking for a permanent city manager “and I will gladly help.”
“I would cast your net wide …” he said, using national, regional and Oregon organizations to advertise the job.
Councilor Anthony Muirhead said he was comfortable holding off on advertising for a city manager for two months while Elliott finds his footing, but asked him to “give us a heads up” if he’s feeling it’s not a good fit.
But moving halfway across the country for a job is never that simple.
Elliott owns a house in Texarkana. He is engaged to a woman who is the chief financial officer of a business there. Oregon’s income taxes are high; Texas has none.
Housing in Oregon is expensive and hard to find, especially in coastal tourist communities. Elliott, who is being paid $7,000 a month (a rate of $84,000 a year versus Beaucaire’s $96,000), has a 30-day rental for $1,800 and may have to look soon for housing outside Yachats.
But Elliott has also told the council he wants to quit parachuting into cities across the west to fix their problems. But he’s hesitant so soon about saying whether Yachats might be the right fit – and be able to afford someone with his experience.
“I am looking for permanent city manager work,” he told YachatsNews. “But my No. 1 goal is to help this organization and this community as best I can. And that includes preparing the city for the permanent city manager’s arrival.”
