by Christy Solo – Editor
There were two agenda topics on the March 5 Shady Cove City Council meeting agenda, the topic of “financial status” was added by Mayor Lena Richardson at the beginning of the meeting.
The final 15 minutes of the one-hour meeting were taken up by council comments, most consisting of pre-written statements regarding the current recall effort against Richardson. We will cover those comments and the statement given on the recall petition in a separate article in this edition.
Interim admin John Edwards was not in attendance due to a family emergency, but gave his staff report to Richardson to deliver.
Edwards’s report began with a request, “I would like to request the Council agree to allow Mayor Richardson to assist me with the city financials in preparation for the audits, collaborating with the senior accountant.” Edwards wrote that the senior account for the Rogue Valley Council of Governments has already found some issues with the audit.
Edwards believes that if he and the Mayor work together preparing documents for the RVCOG accountant they can save the city a lot of money on the overall audit process.
Edwards then wrote that the recruitment process for a new city administrator is underway. The announcement, job description and application for the position can be viewed on the city’s website under the “Job Opportunities” tab on the home page.
Lastly Edwards wrote that the city had met with RH2 Engineering to begin the process of re-starting the city water project. RH2 will be doing the feasibility study.
Next up was Councilor Steve Mitchell who gave the Planning Commission report on behalf of Edwards who is also the Planning Chair. You can read about the Feb. 26 planning meeting in the Upper Rogue Independent’s March 4 article.
The first item under old business was a discussion on the draft Rights of Way ordinance. The draft can be viewed as part of the March 5 agenda packet.
The discussion was to get final input from council on any changes/corrections before the draft is sent to utility companies for their input.
Once the draft comes back from companies such as Hiland Water and Hunter Communications further changes may be made based on their input, then the final draft will go back to legal before coming to council for a first and second reading.
Councilor Kathy Nuckles created the final draft and noted that the biggest edit was to correct for “too much power” being given to the city administrator in the previous version.
The edit ensures changes, etc. to the ordinance would go through planning first.
Mitchell suggested they pull the full fee schedule out of the draft and create a separate fee schedule document; the RoW ordinance would then read “please see separate fee schedule.”
He explained that way if there were changes to the master fee schedule, the RoW ordinance wouldn’t need to be changed as well and vice versa.
All councilors agreed that was an excellent idea.
The motion to release the draft (amended as above) to utility companies for review and comment carried 5/0.
Under the new business topic of Financial Status, Richardson expanded on Edwards’s request for she, Edwards and the senior accountant to work together preparing documents for the audit.
Richardson’s statement first explained, “During the FY23 audit, the auditors compiled supplemental schedules and reconciled bank statements.” Then noted the reason for Edwards’s request for her assistance, “For FY24, we will take a different path. The plan for the FY24 audit is to complete this basic staff work in-house before sending information to the audit team, thus saving time and money.”
Richardson then exemplified some account balance discrepancies RVCOG has found, saying, “reconciliations must be systematically performed to correct our account balances and provide reliable information to the auditors.”
She concluded saying, “In parallel, we will soon begin our budget process and will need a meeting with the budget committee to explain a restructuring of our funds and accounts to meet the requirements of a budget that accurately reflects actual business activity, city operations, future projects and estimates of beginning fund balances. To put it mildly, the current fund structure created by our former City Administrator is broken.
“The amount of work ahead of us is almost overwhelming. To that end, we need to discuss our path forward.”
Before there was a motion to allow for Richardson to help staff with the basic staff work, there was a discussion on the year’s first budget meeting and recruiting a full budget committee.
Council would like to have the first budget meeting “as soon as possible” and it was decided they need to contact all members of the 25/26 Budget Committee to see who is available and interested.
The Budget Committee should be comprised of the five council members and five citizens. Richardson said they need at least two citizens so they have a quorum (it can be difficult to get volunteers).
To get one step ahead, they will immediately post for the one citizen opening they know exists and if necessary, will add any other open seats as they contact previous members.
The first meeting is tentatively scheduled for early April.
The motion to allow Richardson to help Edwards and the senior accountant carried 5/0.
During public comment Natalie Swendener first misinterpreted the Bills Paid report, somehow interpreting the note “bills go to Mayor” by a confidential legal bill as “bills are being sent to the mayor’s home.”
When advised the bills go to the mayor’s city email account, not a home address via snail mail, Swendener dug in replying, “That’s what it says, so maybe you need to actually, correct your bills paid report.”
The upshot of Swendener’s comment was that she feels Richardson should not work with Edwards and the senior accountant on in-house staff work preparing audit related documents for the RVCOG accountant.
She closed saying she feels Richardson “taking on this role” is a “violation of transparency.”
Note: It is not. See our Jan. 21 Explainer on “What is Government Transparency?”
Sandra Barber requested that the city form a City Water Committee of experts to hold workshops about city water, Hiland, etc. and to communicate with citizens.
Citizen Art Stirling followed Barber, while water wasn’t his main topic, he did respond to Barber’s topic.
Stirling reminded everyone there had been a Water Task Force in 2011/12 the last time the city made a real run at getting a citywide water system – and it had been voted down by “a handful of disgruntled citizens.”
Note: The Water Task Force consisted of 11 members and was active from April 2011 through Nov. 10, 2012 holding monthly meetings, joint workshops with council and several well-attended town hall meetings in late 2012, as the Nov. 6, 2012 election neared. Despite their efforts and those of council, RH2 engineering and assistance from the Rural Community Assistance Corporation the 2012 bond initiative for citywide water was voted down 65% – 34%.
Water aside, Stirling’s main point was that based on his personal experience working in the city on various commissions and committees since (at least) 2011 was that “Lena Richardson is the only person in this room, and maybe in this city that can clean up the mess” that is the past audits.
Stirling ran through a timeline of past mayors and audits, under whose administration audits had been completed on time and under whose the “ball was dropped” emphasizing the biggest gap began in 2021 and no audits were completed from that point to 2023 when former Mayor Jon Ball took office.
Stirling’s request to citizens was to “Give [Richardson] a chance to do what you wanted her to do and what she was appointed to do.” To complete the audits.
He closed by saying the “constant haggling” and push for a recall, “must stop” and asked citizens to turn some of their “negative” energy into positive work for the city.
Following public comments were council comments, see our separate article on those and the recall in this edition.
