SEQUIM — Minor fireworks ignited this week at the Sequim City Council meeting over golden parachutes, perceived age discrimination and a bit of politics.
It was time for public comment at the Tuesday meeting, and resident Patricia Allen, the first speaker, didn’t mince words.
“Approximately a year ago this month, I came before you,” she began. Since then “I’ve watched the money disappear” as hundreds of thousands went into the firing of city manager Bill Elliott and attempts to hire his successor.
Elliott, dismissed by the council on May 5, 2008, took with him a $152,318 severance package, thanks to a change in his contract back in 2006.
The City Council at the time approved a year’s salary as part of his settlement should Elliott be fired.
Since then, the council paid Police Chief Robert Spinks to serve as interim manager, brought three manager candidates to town last November without hiring any of them and is now paying current interim manager Linda Herzog $7,083 a month for a nine-month contract to end in September.
It has also hired Waldron & Co., a Seattle search firm, $20,000 to recruit a permanent chief.
The total is about $374,000 for the firing-and-hiring process so far, by Allen’s reckoning.
‘So incorrect’
“Your information is so incorrect,” replied member Susan Lorenzen. “First of all, we would have been having to pay somebody for this past year.”
And Elliott “was 66 years old. He was going to be retiring soon” and would have received benefits even if he hadn’t been terminated, she said.
“People are working well past that age,” Allen said, before Mayor Laura Dubois spoke up.
“This is not a debate,” Dubois said.
But it was. Next up at the podium was Mike East, a Sequim planning commissioner who has also been critical of the council decision to fire Elliott.
“I hadn’t planned to get up and talk,” East said. “But I’m 66, and I’m not retired. I also got the feeling there was some age discrimination . . . it upsets me.”
Age discrimination?
East added that he looks around Sequim and sees many people past “retirement age” who are still quite productive.
“You ought to be careful what you say,” he told Lorenzen.
She later called East’s allegation of age discrimination “ridiculous” and added that he’s positioning himself to campaign for City Council in November.
“I’m giving it consideration,” East said in an interview Tuesday night.
He emphasized that his comments were not a pre-campaign salvo but a response to Lorenzen’s “tirade” about when people retire.
Amid the nation’s economic conditions, “you’re going to see a lot more people working longer,” East said.
Lorenzen believes “95 percent of professionals are retired by the age of 66.” Now 55, she retired at 50 from the state of California’s air pollution control department.
Huizinga figures the severance-pay situation will be around for quite some time.
“You are not going to find a city manager without [providing] a golden parachute,” he said after Tuesday’s meeting.
“Every single one of the candidates we interviewed last year wanted a year’s severance pay,” and some expected the city to also cover about $40,000 in relocation expenses.
“We countered,” Huizinga said, but then the negotiations with the finalists fell apart.
After that the council decided to hire Waldron, which also recruited Port Angeles City Manager Kent Myers and Sequim public works director Ben Rankin, who’ll arrive here in late June.
Firm founder Tom Waldron has said advertising for the Sequim manager position — to pay up to $115,000 a year — will start this month with the goal of bringing finalists to town for interviews in August and having a new boss on board in September.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
