Clyde Hill News: “Lack of confidence in the mayor’s performance,” Council votes 5-0
Also: Mayor, City Administrator, and City Attorney respond to community questions about legal bills
The city council unanimously expressed its “lack of confidence in the mayor’s performance” at Tuesday’s city meeting after the Mayor presented a vague and unclear plan to address police officers’ “lack of trust” in the Mayor and City Administrator.
More detail below on this item, as well as other topics of interest to residents, from this past week’s city council meeting. If you find this newsletter useful or interesting, please forward it to your Clyde Hill neighbors and friends. Thank you!
Disclaimer: while I am a councilmember 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. The 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.
The Mayor’s trust problem with police
At Tuesday night’s city council meeting, the Mayor spoke for just over six minutes on what the agenda promised would be “strategies to improve morale and trust” between the administration and police.
Trust problems: from “homeboy” to “you’re lying”
For context, trust problems involving the Mayor and City Administrator have been discussed and documented at city council meetings repeatedly over the last six months.
The problems appear to have started in 2020 when the City Administrator called a police officer “homeboy.” In August of this year, when this incident became public, the Mayor claimed that it had been appropriately addressed and resolved. Police officers, their union, community, and the city council have a different point of view.
In a meeting with the Mayor in November, Clyde Hill police officers expressed surprise that there was no documentation of any disciplinary action about this incident. Comments made to the Mayor from police officers included “you’re lying” and “you’re not doing your job.”
The meeting packet includes documents that recap what happened between these events (link and link). Briefly:
In October, the union representing Clyde Hill police officers sent the City a letter accusing the City Administrator and Mayor of misrepresenting facts and mishandling City documents, as well as dereliction of duty. (The City Administrator and a contractor offered counter-accusations.)
In September, an exit interview with a departing Clyde Hill police officer indicated “a clear lack of trust in the administration.” The Mayor said that she would evaluate and respond to what she called “allegations.”
Back in May, Councilmembers asked the Mayor to investigate concerns related to police concerns with the City Administrator. There was no report back from the Mayor on the concerns.
Mayor: “So the plan, if you will, is what I would call dynamic…”
You can listen to the Mayor’s plan in this video, or you can read her remarks here (link).
Briefly, while her remarks emphasized commitment and referred to possible activities, there were few specifics around a plan, process, or milestones. “The plan, if you will,” she said, “is what I would call dynamic.”
This approach includes “testing the water in a few things, seeing if this is going to be helpful — if not, trying something else.” At another point, she said “There are still some activities and strategies that we are ironing out.”
Councilmembers asked questions trying to tease out plan specifics or even a clear statement of what the Mayor sees as the problem. The Mayor referred to recent meetings with the police in terms of “now that they’ve had a chance to vent” (link) and referred to what was going on as a “journey.”
Councilmember Scott Moore’s questions included a comment about how he had expected “more content.”
The Mayor offered a written document as part of her plan. It appears to be from that morning and has exactly one sentence:
“As the leaders of the City of Clyde Hill we are dedicated and committed to improve the morale, transparency, and trust among our staff, residents, and City Council.”
This sentence appears above signatures from the Mayor, City Administrator, Police Chief, and Police Lieutenant.
It’s not clear what the significance of this document is. There have been no complaints or issues involving the Police Chief or Lieutenant. Councilmember Kim Muromoto questioned why the document included some but far from all the administration and city leaders.
Call to resign dropped; next update to come in January
After the Mayor’s comments, Cm Steve Friedman offered a motion of “no confidence” in the Mayor and a call for her to resign. The council discussed this for almost an hour, amending the motion and scaling it back to a statement of “lack of confidence.” Here’s an excerpt from the beginning of the discussion:
The Mayor set expectations of another update at January meeting.
Mayor, others answer questions re City legal bills
Members of the Administration clarified that the city’s legal expenditures are in the service of the larger community and not individuals. These clarifications came in response to resident concerns about taxpayers paying legal fees for “Council’s personal agendas and pet projects.”
Here’s an excerpt from the City Attorney:
Some people in the community have raised a question about whether or not I bill legal time to council members or staff members on personal issues and the answer to that is I do not….
I do not provide specific personal advice to any council member or any staff member and charge it to the… well I don’t do it at all, and I certainly wouldn’t do it and charge it to the city of Clyde Hill….
By the rules of professional responsibility, I’m not allowed to do that. (link)
At the November budget advisory meeting, a resident asked whether individual council members engaged the city attorney on personal matters. The Mayor clarified that all spending on the city attorney was in service of the city at large and not related to any personal use.
Despite that clear answer, other residents have continued to ask whether the city spent legal fees in service of “Council’s personal agendas and pet projects.” For example:
Councilmember Steve Friedman had the flagpole wrangling in his Aqua Vista HOA. The legal fee cost to taxpayers: $12,451.
Council sought out and voted to hire a new city attorney. Cost to taxpayers, $12,935.
The Mayor and City Administrator denied and disagreed with these statements. For example, regarding the decision to hire a new city attorney, the Mayor said:
I will give council credit for raising the question about our contracts and looking at the opportunity to become best practice and challenge what was done in the past and bringing it up to kind of current standards.
I would not call that a pet project. I would call it that that is how it was brought forth and then we processed it from there. I had never called it a pet project. (link)
I think that the comments from the Mayor, City Attorney, and City Administrator make sense and address the resident concerns.
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Dean Hachamovitch