by Christy Solo – Editor
There were a handful of items on the April 16 Shady Cove City Council meeting agenda, arguably the most important was an update on the recruitment of a new city administrator.
Per Mayor Lena Richardson council interviewed the top three candidates in an executive session April 14 and, “The individual whose ranking exceeded the others was a good match to the qualifications documented our recruitment package and our job description.”
Richardson then said they would refer to this individual as “Candidate Number One” for the time being because they are currently employed and their privacy must be protected.
That said Richardson made a motion to “Employ Candidate Number One as Shady Cove City Administrator, commencing on or about May 18th, 2026” with conditions such as the completion of a thorough background check.
The motion carried 5/0 and if Candidate One accepts the offer their name should be made public at the next meeting. It’s likely council will also set up a “meet and greet” with the new administrator sometime in May.
During staff reports there was one “mark your calendar” announcement during interim admin John Edward’s report. The city will host a “Pre-Fire Season Open House” May 12 from 5-7 p.m. at the Upper Rogue Community Center.
The event will be attended by Jackson County Emergency Management, the Sheriff’s Department and representatives from Fire District 4 all of whom will answer questions and give advice on the upcoming season with a focus on emergency alerts and preparedness.
The URCC is working with the Red Cross to see if they can send representatives also.
If you struggled with one of the doors during a recent visit to City Hall, worry no more, the doors have been repaired per Edwards. Additionally he reported that Public Works is continuing to work on storm drains.
Lastly Edwards gave a reminder that the city still requires pre-authorization for individuals to attend meetings via Zoom (in an attempt to stop further meeting disruptions).
Those who wish (or think they might want to) attend Zoom meetings need to stop by City Hall and register with staff so they can be put on the “known” list. Edwards emphasized that registration must be done under an individual’s name, no groups are being registered at the moment (though each individual from a group can register separately).
As of now there is no virtual option for registration (e.g. email, phone call, etc.) if this changes there will be an update.
Under old business council finally adopted the Sunstone land use agreement (see details in the April 8, 2026 SC Council Article in the Upper Rogue Independent). Councilor Kathy Nuckles, who has been working with Sunstone for just over a year to reach an agreeable agreement, gave a brief overview and fielded a couple councilor questions before the motion to approve was made. The motion carried 5/0.
Next was an amendment to the Business Oregon City Drinking Water Grant Contract (AKA the $1.5 million water grant). The amendment was needed because the current amendment still says the city will work with Sunstone on city water and that is no longer happening.
Per Nuckles the new amendment is also “to update the project description to reflect feasibility, design, and initial intake construction. We updated the project completion to June 2027.”
Nuckles again noted that Business Oregon is aware that many steps in the process will require authorization from various government entities and this may push out the 2027 deadline.
Nuckles continued discussing amendments to the project budget. She said the elimination of the admin fund and reallocation of those monies to other funds was “an eye opener” for her. Per Business Oregon the admin fund cannot be used to fund City Hall operations (work on the grant). It can only be used for contracted tasks or a full-time employee dedicated solely to the water grant. So it’s previous use to pay the former City Administrator’s assistant was a “no go.”
Nuckles then discussed the in-progress audit on previous drawdowns from the water fund. She said, “expenses were misrepresented and not consistent in the general ledger,” including approximately $7400 in administrative costs from the first drawdown and another $8,000 from the second. Lastly $6,700 in planning charges were denied.
Nuckles said those monies may need to be refunded to Business Oregon. She could not go into further details during the meeting because all of this is also being discussed with the city’s attorney.
Nuckles then said that the audit appears to show former administrator Michele Parry used the water fund as “a dumping ground” for various expenses include her own salaried work on non-water grant applications and all work done for the city by RH2 Engineering including non-water related jobs such as Hannah’s Ridge and the new city park.
As of the meeting the audit showed $125K logged against the $1.5 million and at least $50K needed to be moved out of the grant and applied to other lines within the city’s budget – going back through fiscal year 2024/25.
The city will be able to continue with a third drawdown of approximately $40K to continue the work with RH2 on the feasibility study even as the audit of the previous drawdowns continues.
The new amendment will show the exact, approved steps the city is taking toward the water project.
Before council approved the amendment, Councilor Jeff Vanier said going forward he’d like there to be “more eyes” on future payments from the grant. Nuckles agreed saying for now the only payments would be to RH2 until the feasibility study is done, but once actual work begins and more payments are required to more entities, possibly all payments should come to council before approval.
The motion to amend carried 5/0.
Under new business was the acknowledgement of an application for an Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission application. The application was from Slightly Tilted, Kinda Shady Pizza who want to add adult beverages to their dine-in menu.
The OLCC will issue the actual license, but the city needs to acknowledge/approve the application as a housekeeping issue.
The motion to approve carried 5/0.
Next was Resolution 2603 changing the signatories for drawdowns from the $1.5million, another housekeeping issue. Drawdown requests need to be signed by the Council President and City Administrator with the Mayor signing that those two individuals are authorized. Because both the Council President and Administrator have changed since the last drawdown, the names needed to be changed.
The motion carried 5/0 to approve Nuckles and Edwards with Mayor Lena Richardson signing that they can sign.
As there were no written comments or public comments, council moved on to council comments.
Vanier said the last week had been “great” specifying the final administrator interviews and said he is “very excited” about Candidate No. 1.
Councilor Paige Winfrey said FD4’s recent “push back” event (community members pushing the new fire engine back into the fire station) was a great event and that it was, “cool, seeing a lot of the little kids and even some of the older folks trying to push that fire truck back into that building.”
She also announced that some citizens are planning for a community wide yard sale June 6. She said the FD4 Support Group will be participating to raise funds for the Children’s Christmas Party. However they will only sell their own personal items, they are not taking in donations from the community as they have done in the past.
Nuckles reviewed council’s accomplishments for April, including the admin recruitment, the budget workshop, getting RH2 working on the water feasibility study again and finally coming to an agreement with Sunstone on their land-use application.
For her comments Richardson discussed the nature of Public Records and city owned computers, phones, etc.
Richardson began, “Continuing with our duty to provide transparency and clarification of issues brought forth by Shady Cove residents,” then said, “a citizen” had gone to the Rogue Valley Council of Governments asking them to “weigh in regarding access to the former city administrator’s computer, email and other drives and files on city-owned equipment.”
Richardson continued saying, “RVCOG appropriately informed the Shady Cove resident that all equipment, emails, drives and files are property of the city and all work conducted on city-issued equipment is accessible by the city with no expectation of privacy by the employee when using city-owned property.”
Note: This is a good “head’s up” for not only anyone who wants to run for elected office in Shady Cove (or any Oregon government entity), or volunteer or work for any Oregon government entity.
Moreover, it’s a good reminder for anyone who communicates with any government entity via an official government email or government owned phone, etc.
It’s all public record.
This also includes correspondence which you send to an entity, such as RVCOG, which RVCOG may then send to a government entity. Once it’s sent to – in this case – the City of Shady Cove – it’s public record.
The Upper Rogue Independent obtained the public record documents of the query to RVCOG and RVCOG’s response, both of which was sent to the City of Shady Cove.
The query to RVCOG came from Natalie Swendener, who has been a champion of government transparency in many recent council meetings, but now questions the public nature of some communications. Namely those in which she participated.
Swendener’s main concern seemed to be that her home address and “detailed information to my residence” – which were included in a back-and-forth email between Swendener and former Admin Michele Parry using Parry’s city email account – had been “leaked to the public.”
Note: You cannot “leak” a public document to the public.
Despite the Public Records Disclosure in the signature line of Parry’s email (see screen grab) Swendener still seemed surprised that all the information in the email was – in fact public.
The State of Oregon has put together an excellent document on “Public Records 101” which you can view online, or even download.
With transparency currently such a hot topic, not only in Shady Cove, but now on a state level, anyone considering becoming involved in government on any level – or as illustrated by the RVCOG example – even communicating with officials, employees, volunteers, etc. should give the document a read.
