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Morro Bay still considering firing city manager and attorney

September 20, 2013
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Jamie Irons

Morro Bay Mayor Jamie Irons is resuming his effort to terminate the contracts of City Manager Andrea Lueker and City Attorney Rob Schultz.

At next Tuesday’s city council meeting, Irons will request that the council obtain outside legal counsel to guide them through the dispute over Lueker and Schultz’s employment. In a report authored by the mayor Monday, Irons asked the council to approve a contract of no more than $12,500 to hire outside counsel.

Irons suggested hiring an attorney for 50 hours at $250 an hour, which he described in the report as a “conservative high end estimate.”

On September 12, the Morro Bay council met in closed session to consider terminating Lueker and Schultz. Irons, along with Councilman Noah Smukler and Councilwoman Christine Johnson, called the closed session meeting on 24 hours notice.

Irons initially scheduled the meeting to occur in a City Hall conference room, but more than 100 members of the public showed up. The council moved the meeting to the Veterans Memorial Building, where a standing-room only crowd overwhelmingly supported Leuker and Schultz and circulated a petition to recall Irons.

After meeting in closed session for more than an hour, the council voted 5-0 to take no action.

Councilwoman Nancy Johnson and Councilman George Leage have both expressed opposition to Irons’s bid to fire the city manager and attorney.

Schultz said during the September 12 hearing that Irons violated several government codes in the manner in which he conducted the meeting.

Irons said that he did not obtain outside counsel for the meeting, but that he researched and followed the law.

No member of the council has yet levied any charges or complaints against Lueker or Schultz.

The council will meet September 24 at 6 p.m. at the veteran’s hall. The request to hire outside legal counsel is on the consent agenda.

 


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I’m asking everyone who attended last week’s City Council meeting to show up at the meeting on Tuesday and bring a friend. Jamie Irons needs to be shown that the people of Morro Bay don’t appreciate what he’s doing to their town. Call everyone you know and remind them. These people are going to destroy a city that has taken many years to build.


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Irons wants world domination, or one-millllllllion dollars!


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Within the Nerd Sanctuary, it appears that the odd are trying to get even.


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I like the cormorants.


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What kind of person dislikes cormorants?


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Don’t really care for any type of ‘rant.


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Wow…someone on this board really has an ax to grind. That’s the trouble with crazy activists.


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givemeabrea2//!!!!!!!!!!!/you could have not set it better. I suggest like you or your comrades filing a police complaint when thing do not go your whey, You are so right.Given recent MB history,,,,,that is the way you all do it.

http://calcoastnews.com/2010/10/winholtz-files-police-complaint-after-losing-council-vote/


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Are we speaking klingon this evening?


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Oh, that kind.


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This move by J. Irons and cronies does not pass the SMELL test….


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Either did the old Happy Jack’s, but everyone still went there to drink.


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1) One’s not going to get a very good attorney for $250/hour.

a) Either Irons is compensating the attorney another way, or

b) It’s not going to be a very good attorney.


2) An easy claim could be made by a sharp attorney (like Schultz) that Iron’s bungling is leading to actionable Workplace Hostility.


3) Irons has already committed political suicide. There is virtually no chance he will get re-elected. From this position, he need not worry about alienating his constituents.


4) Those who witch-hunted Schultz and Lueker about being inaccessible to citizens will be in for a BIG surprise should they be supplanted by “New Blood” that does not know this city.

a) I don’t think it will get that far.


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dream on


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Paying a lot for something doesn’t guarantee it will be better. That is the thinking that has gotten city managers for $300,000+, and many, many, many governmental people for way more than it should be.


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There must be some gain Irons believes he will obtain by continuing his walk down political-suicide lane.


The only one that makes any kind of sense is that Irons, et al., wants to pull something that he knows the city manager and city attorney will thwart.


Any other guesses?


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I don’t like what he’s doing, but I don’t get the feeling he is Nefarious.


My guess is that he has a firmly-held opinion regarding the sewer upgrade, and he views any actions that veer from his opinion as adversarial.


My opinion is that City Staff have been working on this project a lot longer than he has, and their knowledge trumps his. He doesn’t like that. Nor do his handlers, who are trying to work us into a Los Osos saga, wherein everyone loses.


I hope he can pull his head from his ass long enough to apologize to Schultz/Lueker, and salvage what’s left of a team for the sewer deal. We really don’t need another Los Osos nightmare.


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lol…..no The Cloisters is well on its way to looking like the beach strand homes in north MB….you know out there on Beachcomber etc…….at least they bungled the mess all together.


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Let’s make sure he’s a one-bungle mayor! WAHOOOOO!


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If I’m not mistaken, Jamie Irons’ brother-in-law is attorney John Maloney from Ventura. Anyone want to guess where he’s getting his legal advise from or who might get the consulting contract for this fiasco. I really hope that Calcoast News is working on a detailed expose of the incestuous relationship between Katy Liptig, Jamie Irons, Jamie’s wife,Christine Johnson’s husband, Brown Act violations and the complete incompetence of Irons, Smukler and Christine Johnson. Morro Bay needs someone to investigate the damage that these three are doing to our small town before it’s too late. Everyone needs to show up at Tuesday’s meeting before it’s too late.


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The only reason to destroy the careers of two good and ethical employees is to replace them with unethical cronies. Just watch and sew who they put in. Friend of a friend….


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If their careers are destroyed, they have done it to themselves. If they had respect for the City, its residents, and for themselves, they would have quietly resigned as have other high-level Morro Bay City staff people whose employment has been terminated. Those people may have had their faults, but they behaved like professionals and showed respect for the residents they had served .


The City Manager and Attorney COULD, have behaved like their predecessors and simply told others that they felt it was time for a change, as their views and those of the new Council majority simply did not mesh. None of the Council members would ever have said otherwise. There would have been no black marks on the records of the terminated staff members. They would have departed on good terms with everyone, and they probably would have had their choice of excellent job offers.


Instead, they chose to modify the confidential meeting announcement to include their job titles and to allow and/or organize a raucous protest demonstration. That is not likely to encourage potential employers to hire them. Most employers do not want to hire a person with a record of causing this kind of upheaval, and the record of this fiasco is online and probably will be there for years.


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As a Business person that loves Morro bay, It’s insulting to see this. “no reason” i don’t understand. Andrea is adored and beloved and from all appearances, is doing an outstanding job.

is recalling a mayor realistic?


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First of all, we are not talking about tour guides or nursery school teachers here. We are talking about key City staff positions.


Unfortunately, being “adored and beloved” is not sufficient to qualify anyone for a City Manager position. Personnel decisions regarding holders of such positions are made solely on the basis of job performance.


The fact is, although the public can often see the results of good or not-so-good work by City staff, we have no way of doing a truly comprehensive evaluation of their job performance. Most of their work is simply not visible to the public. It is, however, very visible to their management – the Mayor and Council members who work with them constantly.


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Oh bull. If there is a legitimate reason the mayor could articulate it. He can’t and neither can you. The only goal is to put in a crony.


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He did not articulate it because, to protect the City AND those whose terminations are being considered, it must be kept confidential. Anyone with a knowledge of how personnel decisions are made knows that.


I learned how these things work during many years as a manager, working in large organizations that had legal and human resource departments to guide us. We were required to adhere to strict policies regarding the handling of terminations, and confidentiality was always stressed as being absolutely critical.


These continued attempts to invent corruption where there is none appears pretty typical of the old Yates/Borchard regime. I have been told that when you unsuccessfully ran for City Council in SLO in 2012, you listed then-mayor Bill Yates as a key endorser. That seems to explain a lot.


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He won’t articulate it because he has no good reason other than a selfish political agenda.


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You appear to have become accustomed to the way things used to work in Morro Bay and to be assuming that the new administration thinks and acts just like the old one did.


Your term “selfish political agenda” would cover a large percentage, probably more than half, of the reasons behind the actions of the old Council. For them, that was SOP.


Believe it or not, there actually are people who don’t work that way, and Irons is one of them.


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The problem is! mb that things did use to work in Morro Bay and now obviously they do not. I hear people complain about the twin bridges for example as if that is a negative mark on Yates. They either have forgotten or they must not have lived here before the bridges were replaced. Also…Spending money to replace two competent employees at this time is pure nonsense. The city council just raised the sales tax and now they are going to spend a half a million to replace these two well loved employees? Come on… where do I sign the recall petition?


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Well Mr. Activist, I dare say if you published the names of those who endorsed, and continue to support the current mayor the citizenry of this county would be disappointed

at best. I reads like a who’s who of NIMBY’s

It’s time to begin the recall process.


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It doesn’t work that way, how many times have we seen public employees leave under a cloud and allowed to retire at full pension and the only thing we hear is “It’s a personal matter” and thanks to the public unions the ones paying the bills never get the truth


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After the public outrage at the first meeting to oust the city manager and city attorney, the mayor is going to continue to push it?


He is committing political suicide. What is the payback to him and his toadies on the city council?


There has to be a reason they want to get rid of the people who actually know how the city is run, and who would know if money started being shifted about.


This is exactly how the ex-mayor of the City of Bell, Robert Rizzo, now awaiting trial, started setting the City of Bell up for plundering. He got rid of the people with a history of service to the City of Bell and implanted his own toadies.


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Most of that “public outrage” came from political friends of the City Attorney and City Manager, and quite a few of them, including some who comment on CCN stories, do not even live in Morro Bay. That said, neither do the City Manager and City Attorney.


That protest demonstration by out-of-towners, other political cronies, and lower-level city staff people has not impressed too many people. If Lueker were a good manager and true public servant, she would have shown more concern for taxpayer money and, after profusely thanking the staff for their support, would have sent them back to work, serving the public, which is what they are supposed to be doing at 1:00 in the afternoon and thereafter.


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Seemed pretty impressive to me.


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To me other city employees coming in to support these two people tell me that they must be doing their job to the likes of most all employees, I thought that was a pretty good show of support, now if the city Manager and lawyer ha d done a poor job the tables would have been turned by the employees.

Irons has done nothing for this city yet, a second term doesn’t look good for him should he last this term.


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Subordinates are not going to say bad things about their managers, may in some cases think they will get “brownie points” for being supported and, finally, are not in a position to accurately determine whether their managers are meeting the performance standards and requirements set by the Council.


Irons has not done anything for the City yet? Wrong.


Irons has brought harbor lease negotiations out of the back rooms and into the light. For years, residents have complained of corruption in that area. Now negotiations are done in full view of residents and corruption is far less likely to happen.


Irons has the WWTP project, which City staff and prior councils totally fouled up, on an intelligent course. He involved qualified members of the public in choosing a project manager and in identifying project priorities.


Irons is working to establish better relationships with State agencies that must approve our projects.


Irons has made the city staff fix a screwed-up 10-year street pavement plan. Staff had forgotten one “small” detail – namely, to include North Morro Bay i the plan.


Irons is working to fix the disastrous state of our drinking water supply, something caused by City staff’s bad decisions and poor performance.


Now Irons is working to replace people whose poor job performance resulted in major financial losses and poor service to residents.


I could go on, but you get the idea. Claiming he has done nothing for the City is nonsense.


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Yawn


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You don’t have to live in Morro Bay to recognize shady politics.


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No, but it helps.


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I don’t have any RESPECT for a link that just leads me to another story on the same site, but I do respect you as a linker.


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I don’t have any RESPECT for a link that just leads me to another story on the same site, but I do respect you as a linker.


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Could you repeat that please?


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THANK YOU RODGER!! You have spoken well and thoughtfully for all of us who love this town!


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I miss Toad The Wet Sprocket.


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