SEQUIM — Public comment and the Sequim City Council’s response — or lack thereof — set off a sharply worded exchange between the mayor and the former mayor on Monday night.
Council member Walt Schubert, mayor from 2005 to 2007, started the discussion by addressing the four newer members: Ken Hays, Erik Erichsen, Susan Lorenzen and the current mayor, Laura Dubois.
“When you four were elected,” in November 2007, “one of the things you said was that the council didn’t listen to people,” Schubert began, adding that “a lady who came before us, I thought, was treated badly” during the council’s May 26 meeting.
The speaker was Patricia Allen, and she came to the podium with a list of costs stemming from the new four’s firing of City Manager Bill Elliott in May 2008.
The expenses, including Elliott’s $152,318 severance package, the salary for interim managers Robert Spinks last year and Linda Herzog this year plus the costs of searching for a successor, total some $374,000, Allen said.
Lorenzen called her statement “incorrect,” saying Elliott was 66 years old and about ready to retire, so Sequim would have had to pay his benefits and find a new manager anyway.
“She was practically attacked,” Schubert later said of Allen.
Schubert also upbraided the newer members for failing to respond to comments by Don Hall, a former council member who is now seeking to rejoin the panel via the Nov. 3 election.
On May 11, Hall urged the City Council to express support for the U.S. Border Patrol, whose intensified presence on the North Olympic Peninsula has sparked a mixed reaction in recent months.
Hall got no response from the council, Schubert noted.
Herzog said she’d intended to send him a letter and apologized for not doing that yet.
“We will certainly make sure we do our best” to respond to such comments in the future, Dubois added.
But after the council meeting, the mayor said Schubert had not only asked city staff for an analysis of the costs of dismissing Elliott but had also “fed” Allen the information.
‘Campaigning from desk’
“If he does that again, I will rule him out of order. He’s campaigning from the desk,” Dubois said.
Schubert is running for re-election to the council seat he’s held since 2000; his opponent is Sequim Planning Commission Chairman Ted Miller.
“I did ask for the information from staff,” Schubert said Tuesday morning, “because I want it for budget time. But Patricia Allen got it on her own.”
Allen confirmed that, saying she sought out the information in order to remind the newer council members of the long-term cost of their decisions.
Schubert added he didn’t request the analysis for campaign purposes.
“The reason I want it,” he said, “is because at every council meeting, we’re talking about issues of money” such as whether to spend $10,000 on a consultant’s affordable housing “action plan.”
“That’s nothing compared to what we’ve blown,” he said.
Dubois, for her part, has blamed Elliott’s golden parachute on a decision made before she was elected.
The City Council, led by Schubert, approved a severance package with 12 months’ salary for the city manager should he be fired.
As for Hall’s request for council support of the Border Patrol, Schubert and Dubois agree, at least in part. Both said Monday night that it’s not Sequim’s role to comment on a federal agency’s activities.
Dubois added that Hall deserved a response, but it should simply read, “Thank you for your opinion.”
The City Council hears public comment during its meetings at 6 p.m. on the second and third Monday of each month in the Transit Center, 190 W. Cedar St.
But on the public-comment rules printed on the agenda for last Monday’s meeting, a change appeared.
“Following public comments, Council will not respond or ask staff to respond,” Rule 6 reads. The clause was apparently added after the May 26 meeting, when Allen spoke.
“I’ll be putting my questions in the form of a letter to the four council members,” Allen said Tuesday.
“They’re the ones making all the decisions.”
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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.
