Clyde Hill News: Council votes to eliminate city administrator position
Comprehensive Plan approved; middle housing legislation advances
The city council voted 3-2 to eliminate the position of the City Administrator toward the end of a contentious six hour meeting late Monday night.
In introducing the topic, Councilmember Lisa Wissner-Slivka said:
We’re coming to you… not because we relish the prospect of having the Mayor run the city administration… We’re coming to you on behalf of the residents that came forward during the budget process or during the 2025 budget process and felt disrespected and ignored….
We believe that the time has come for a change in the city’s senior executive staff. And in the long run, again, I believe that we need professionals to run the city. The elected officials are not the right people to do it. But I don't see any other alternative to getting a change in the senior staff other than eliminating the position of City Administrator, and then regrouping and coming back at a future date to figure out how we want to move forward.
More on this topic and a brief recap of other actions at the meeting, below. Of note: the city’s long-running Comprehensive Plan is complete. For context, neighboring Medina approved theirs back in November.
Note: I’m sending this newsletter out early because I’m traveling and trying to celebrate a family milestone on the east coast. Thank you for understanding that my email responses may be delayed.
Disclaimer: while I am a council member on the Clyde Hill City Council, I write this newsletter in my capacity as an individual resident. Any opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily the position of the city. City information and references here are from public sources. I welcome email responses — and if the topic is about city business I will respond from my city email account.
City administrator in the spotlight
From a resident’s point of view, it’s not clear what the expectations of a city administrator are in Clyde Hill. Communication on this topic has been scarce even as residents’ questions and concerns have mounted.
Clyde Hill has a full-time paid professional running the administration on behalf of an elected mayor because the city council created the position and agreed to fund it. From the city code, that appears to have happened in 1986:
The current city administrator, Dean Rohla, started his service as City Administrator in 2021 on apparently short notice in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis with no previous experience as a city administrator. His predecessor left the role at Clyde Hill after a notably short tenure (link).
Council action Monday night
Cm Brad Andonian made the motion to change the city’s code and eliminate the position; Cm Wissner-Slivka seconded it.
In a document titled “Budget Crisis” (link), the two council members wrote:
We acknowledge that six part-time resident volunteers [the Mayor and five council members] cannot over-function to deliver the performance that residents need from the city’s full-time professionals.
We do not have confidence in the senior leadership of the city’s full-time professionals. In response, we have prepared two items for discussion: an amendment to reduce the 2025 budget deficit and an ordinance to eliminate the position of city administrator.
We have not seen urgency, focus, or leadership from the city’s senior full-time professionals and at this point we no longer expect it.
Mayor Steve Friedman interrupted the council discussion of the topic to call the measure “heartless” and added “I have every intention to veto” the measure.
Issues and concerns
Most recently, the lack of progress on addressing the city’s long-running budget issues has become an acute issue. Some residents have found City Administrator Rohla’s approach to the city’s budget crisis (link) as lacking a sense of urgency and focusing too much on increasing revenues (most likely via increased taxes). For example, at a November 2024 meeting, he responded to resident questions about the ongoing deficits by saying:
“We have substantial reserves that we can live on for a significant number of years… while we’re easing our way into whatever a final determination is for revenue.” (link)
Concerns about his inaction on the budget crisis have not been helped by an apparently oft-strained relationship with Clyde Hill’s police department.
For example, after City Administrator Rohla called Office Fernandez of Clyde Hill PD “homeboy” (link), the union representing officers sent a public letter to the Mayor and city council expressing concerns of “perceived dereliction of duty by the city administration, Mayor Klaas and City Administrator Rohla.” (link)
In response to then-Mayor Marianne Klaas’ management of this issue (link), Mayor Friedman (at the time a council member) offered a motion of “no confidence” in the Mayor and a call for her to resign. The council went on to approve the measure unanimously after dropping the call to resign and softening the “no confidence” language to “lack of confidence in the mayor’s performance.”
“Immoral, unethical”
A new, similar issue has emerged in the last few weeks.
A resident used the terms “immoral” and “unethical” and “fraud” (link) during his public comment Monday night about remarks from the Assistant City Administrator, who reports to the City Administrator. In the remarks, the city staffer suggests that the city tell residents that a property tax increase would fund police and then use the tax proceeds on other services. Another resident offered written public comment (link) about the same topic. You can watch the original remarks under discussion here: link.
Neither the Mayor nor the City Administrator responded on Monday night to the residents’ public comments about the Assistant City Administrator’s proposal.
Process v progress
One way to make sense of the situation is that under his leadership, City Hall has focused on process rather than progress on work that actually addresses resident concerns.
Candidly, finding “wins” to report in this newsletter has been challenging.
For example, residents have struggled with the administration’s response to a years-long rat problem and expressed frustration about inconsistent code enforcement. The missed deadlines, poor communication, and vendor-management problems related to the city’s Comprehensive Plan have been, in some ways, the standard.
Communication ahead?
It’s not clear what happens next.
It’s possible that ahead of the next council meeting, the city administration will attempt to offer its point of view on the topic to residents.
One challenge that some residents have expressed with city communications involves how faithfully the city represents what is actually happening.
For example, the consensus that the city faces a budget crisis (link) is missing from the Mayor’s most recent update on the budget process (link). Monday night, when asked if this omission was deliberate or inadvertent, the Mayor responded “Neither.” (link)
In 2022, then-Councilmember Friedman skewered then-Mayor Klaas for a report she sent to residents, making a motion that the council approved 5-0:
Resolved: the City Council expresses its disappointment that the Mayor released such an inappropriate, non-factual, and thoroughly political document rather than working with Council to collaborate on something that would serve the public with factual and specific information. (link)
Candidly, the growing gap between what people directly involved in these issues are willing to say in public and what they are willing to say in private is a concern.
Other updates
Middle Housing
The city council voted 4-1 to send the city’s proposed middle housing legislation to the state’s Department of Commerce for feedback.
A majority of the council declined to send it to the Planning Commission for feedback as well. Feedback from Commerce is the next step in enacting local legislation that will “make sure that current city height limits, setbacks, etc. apply consistently [or as consistently as possible] to all forms of housing developed in Clyde Hill.” (link)
Planning Commission referrals
The city’s council referred two items — related to a tree code strategy and regulations about lights and accessory structure definitions — to the city’s Planning Commission for recommendations.
This referral is part of a “reboot” of how the city council and Planning Commission work together, according Mark Kroese, who chairs the commission. According to comments from Planning Commission Chair Kroese on Monday night:
“We have a staff that is super busy… and we have a Planning Commission that, as it stands today, has no assigned work — and we are trying to more fully utilize the capabilities of the Planning Commission.” (link)
Short Plats
The council agreed that the decision maker for short plat applications should be the Planning Commission and not City Hall.
This proposed change addresses current conflicts in city code related to short plats (link). What to do with any short plat applications the city receives between now and when the updated code is enacted is up to the Mayor.
Budget Priorities
Councilmembers Steve Sinwell and Ryan Olson abstained from voting on the council’s budget priorities, declining to agree that first responders (police, fire, and EMS) and land use (clear code and consistent enforcement) were priorities for residents (link). Cm Sinwell also pushed back on recommending
that the police budget is the last place to look for cost reductions and savings as the city actively pursues adjustments to correct our historical imbalance between revenues and expenditures. (link)
As a result, the council did not vote on that matter.
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Dean Hachamovitch