City Personnel Concerns

ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS FOR THE COUNCIL, MAYOR AND CITY STAFF:

Coucilmember Mayhew,

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my concerns.  It's unfortunate that yours is the only response I've received.  (Noticing the Mayor has been copied on this as well and has not responded.)

In your reply about the Assistant City Attorney you note that the information you are receiving is coming from the city administration (I'm guessing that means the mayor and city attorney?).  I would ask that you do a bit of your own research.  Again, it is very unusual for a city of our size to require one full time attorney, much less two.  

Questions I would ask:

1: What are they doing with their hours?  Councilmember Sundwall indicated part of it is in regards to public records requests.  Might the money be better spent on serving the citizens with a better system to fulfill those requests, rather than on an attorney to battle it out with the citizens?

2: Who is the current city attorney representing?  From the council meetings I have attended and from my conversations with others at the city it seems the City Attorney is spending a good portion of his time giving legal advice to the Mayor.  The City Attorney is not the Mayor's personal attorney and should not be used as such. 

3: Is the current City Attorney doing his job to the best of his ability?  He has been fired previously for picking and choosing the issues he addresses.  Is he doing that in Snoqualmie?  Have you had any conversations with the people at City Hall who work with him on a regular basis or with residents who've had opportunities to work with him?  Has there been a complete accounting of how he spends his time and has that calendar been viewed by a knowledgeable person outside of City Hall who can give an impartial opinion on whether it seems appropriate and correct?

Thanks again for your attention to my concerns,

Kim Lingo

COUNCILMEMBER MAYHEW'S RESPONSE:

Dear Ms. Lingo,

Thank you very much for attending the Town Hall meeting.  You may not have noticed but Councilmember Holloway also stuck around for quite awhile, and I know that all of the Councilmembers are interested in increasing community interaction and some just had other commitments to be at that evening.

On your personnel questions the short answer is that in our city the Mayor is the directly elected head of the administrative branch, meaning that all city employees report ultimately to him. The Council approves salary schedules, compensation budgets, and what positions exist, and approves the hiring of a few key positions such as department heads.  But after hiring for those positions, and for all other positions, the Council has no direct role in supervising those employees. 

So when you have personnel concerns you should communicate them to the Mayor who is responsible for personnel matters.  Remember that the City has an obligation to protect certain privacy rights of its employees and to protect individuals from exposure to legal liability related to concerns they have, so in many instances you won’t receive detailed information about how and why personnel matters are handled the way they are. But you certainly can ask, and I encourage you to contact the Mayor to do that. If you have broader policy concerns then communicating those to both the Mayor and the Council is certainly appropriate.

Regarding the assistant attorney position, the administration has presented information that it will be less expensive than the amount we are already paying and expect to pay for outside legal services while increasing the available hours as the person will be a full time employee.

Thank you again for contacting the Council, and please don’t hesitate to contact us in the future.

Sincerely,

Jim Mayhew

Snoqualmie City Council

ORIGINAL MESSAGE TO COUNCIL:

I have a question about personnel decisions:  Who makes them? Does the council have any concerns about how they’re being handled?

I wanted to first give a little background, starting in 2013 with Police Officer Bob Hogan.   Before being hired by Snoqualmie PD was fired by the Tukwila Police force after two excessive force cases that cost the city more than 400-thousand-dollars.  Somehow, he was still hired by Snoqualmie.  And, after he got here, his problems continued.  He had an affair with another officer’s wife.  They met about a dozen times while Hogan was on duty… a situation that led to Hogan being suspended for 20 days… but not fired, even though several of his fellow officers said they didn’t trust him and didn’t want to work with him.  It wasn’t until a year after the affair… and after a federal indictment… that the officer was finally fired.  A short time after that Hogan was sentenced to jail time related to the excessive force cases from Tukwila.

For anyone who thinks, “this was just one bad apple,” I would argue it’s part of a pattern.

The current City attorney, Bob Sterbank, was also fired for poor job performance before the city of Snoqualmie decided to hire him.  On the City’s website Bob’s Bio mentions his work for the cities of DuPont and Lake Forest Park, but the city fails to mention the fact that Mr. Sterbank worked for the city of Mercer Island and was fired in just one year for failure to do his job.  According to Mercer Island he would pick and choose the issues he worked on, often ignoring the needs of residents and other city employees.

Just last year, Lizzy Billington  was arrested for DUI.  Billington had been contracted by the city to run special events.  Last January, Billington hit a parked car on Kinsey Street, near Fairway, and tried to drive away.  She was only stopped when the officer arrived because her car stopped running.

Billington refused a breathalyzer test but was later compelled to take one and blew three times the legal limit. 

Despite this, there are text records between city employees that indicate Billington made a personal phone call to Snoqualmie Police Chief Phipps.  He then texted Snoqualmie officer saying Billington would not be booked into jail, which is the usual protocol, but she would be given a ride home to her children.

Billington didn’t have insurance to cover the damage she caused. Because the car she hit was owned by King County, it was county taxpayers who had to foot the bill of over $7,000.

As a contractor for the City of Snoqualmie, Billington also failed to stay current on the business taxes she’s required to pay to operate here, but she was given an office inside City Hall anyway.  When it was time to renew her contract, at least two residents spoke at a Council meeting to voice their concerns, but the Council voted to sign it anyway.

Billington no longer works for the City.  It’s not really clear why, but from what I understand her contract lapsed last year.  She had continued to work after the DUI investigation and after the city’s own ethics investigation found that Billington violated the rules in a number of ways, including billing the city for work that she hadn’t completed.

Speaking of the ethics investigation…

That same investigation also found that Parks and Public Works Director Dan Marcinko violated city code by starting up a liquor distribution business with Ms. Billington while he was her supervisor.  The independent investigator advised Mayor Larson that it would be appropriate for him to carry out disciplinary action against Marcinko. But, during the investigation and before the final decision, Mayor Larson went ahead and approved a bonus for Marcinko based on his “good performance.”  Now that he has the results of the investigation, there’ve still been no real repercussions for Marcinko other than the Mayor says that this year he won’t be giving him that bonus. 

On top of all this, I just learned that the city of Snoqualmie is looking at the possibility of hiring a second full time city attorney!  Most cities of our size don’t even have one full time attorney. Instead, they contract with a firm that can give them legal services when it’s required.  Why does Snoqualmie require not just one but possibly two full time lawyers?!

So, back to my original questions – who makes these personnel decisions? Who is responsible for overseeing personnel when there are problems?  How does the council feel about the personnel situation, and the need for two attorneys?  And what does the council plan to do to address these concerns?