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Morro Bay council approves severance package for Lueker

December 13, 2013

Andrea LuekerThe Morro Bay City Council approved a severance package Thursday for outgoing City Manager Andrea Lueker.

Lueker will receive a $153,322 payout and will resign from her position on Jan. 3, 2014. The agreement bars both Lueker and the city from making disparaging remarks about each other. Lueker is also barred from suing the city.

Lueker’s severance package includes nine months pay, totaling $116,000, plus $4,081 in holiday pay, $4,500 in unused sick leave and $38,698 in accrued vacation time.

The council voted 5-0 to approve Lueker’s severance package and 3-2, with council members Nancy Johnson and George Leage dissenting, to place her on administrative leave.

Lueker will be on administrative leave until her Jan. 3 resignation, and Administrative Services Director Susan Slayton will assume the role of acting city manager.

“The city has appointed Ms. Susan Slayton as acting city manager who has held this position in Ms. Lueker’s absence in the past,” Mayor Jamie Irons said in a written statement Thursday. “We are placing our confidence in Ms. Slayton while we pursue an interim city manager. This separation agreement concludes this matter, and we are now ready to move on.”

Irons called for the firing of Lueker and then city attorney Rob Schultz in September. Schultz agreed to resign last month and received a $163,235 severance package.

Neither Irons, nor members of the council ever stated a reason for cutting ties with the city’s top two executives.

The ousting of Lueker and Schultz has prompted a campaign to recall Irons. Opponents of Irons are currently gathering signatures on recall petition and need 25 percent of registered Morro Bay voters to sign it in order to trigger an election.

Lueker worked for the city of Morro Bay since 1987, rising the ranks from lifeguard to city manager. She has been city manager since 2007.

 


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The City Manager and Attorney serve at the will of the Council majority and can be let go at any time without cause. They knew what they were signing up for but accepted their contracts knowing that someday, they might be asked to leave.


Previous departures of high-ranking City staff were done in a highly professional manner. These two decided to make their departures into a public circus that was highly UN-professional.


The money spent to secure their departures was a bargain.


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The circus was instigated by your UN-professional Mayoral Ringmaster, from the start when we tried to accomplish his dastardly deeds under the clandestine 24-hour “emergency” meeting back in September, to the drawn-out, sword-hanging-over-your-head proceedings, to the classless way he finally kicked them to the curb.


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The sitting Council majority is directly responsible for the “spectacle” that was created in the releasing of these two employees, plain and simple.


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No kidding. Were they the ones who organized the demonstration and stood at the podium hurling personal insults and threats? Were they the ones who intimidated other meeting attendees who wanted to speak in favor of the Council, but were made too afraid by the threatening behavior of the mob?


Nope. The Council majority was consistently polite to even the most uncivilized yahoos who paraded up to the podium to express hostility and hatred and to create a spectacle of what should have been a private personnel matter


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What don’t you understand? The money spent to make them depart was a complete mistake by Mayor Irons, he could release them at the time of there performance evaluation without cause, he could send out an RFP and see who the other candidates were first. He could renegotiate the severance when his contract needed to be renewed… the list goes on.


Now he fired two great employees. One of which got hired within 15 days of being removed and beat out 90 other applicants. The other had been a long serving committed employee for 27 years. Both were well respected in the community and good at there professions.


This circus was 100% due to Irons incompetency. These, “other departures,” you speak of I’m sure were done in a highly professional manner because of the mayor and council releasing them. You are looking at the wrong side of things.


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I can hardly wait for the polls to open…


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Andrea could have her job back before her severance package runs out.


If Irons gets recalled in June, then replaced with an adult that tips the council Majority toward prudence, Leuker could be hired again within seven months!


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It says in her package that she will not be able to reapply in Morro Bay for three years.


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All it takes is three votes on the council to change that, as we see again and again.


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Yes, it is true that she cannot, by contract, apply to work for the City of Morro Bay for three years, but here’s something you all might find interesting. The original severance contract stated that she would NEVER be able to apply for a city Job in Morro bay. That’s right, you Ironheads….he was actually trying to dictate her future employment possibilities. If that’s not arrogant, pompous, evil, etc., I don’t know what is.


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Another government employee with a fat contract being paid to not work


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Interesting how much they ‘loved Morro Bay’ …..only our money!


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You both need to get a grip. Show some respect. She obviously was doing something right if she was able to work her way up from being a lifeguard to City Manager.


..and fishing village…. don’t say “our” money because I’m born and raised on the Central Coast and I sure as heck don’t want to associate your attitude with the lovely town of Morro Bay. Take “your” money and rude words somewhere else.


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No FV, it may seem hard for you to understand, but they actually DID love working for Morro Bay, at least when the people in charge genuinely appreciated the work they did. The current majority could care less what their past accomplishments were and chose not to work with them to enact their grand vision.


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if it goes by how much you love morro bay then i should be getting a 6-fig severance package. i live in a SUBARU WAGON and i still love Morrobay!


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mbhomeless:

excellent analysis!


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Those contracts are standard in any city manager or city attorney position because you are paying them 100’s of thousands of dollars less then an attorney or manager that oversee’s a budget of that size gets.


Cities compensate that salary loss by giving job security and benefits.


All this could have been avoided if Schultz and Leuker were released during there yearly review or if they sent out another RFP to explore other options while they were in office. Irons inability to manage these firings was a perfect example of why he is not fit to be mayor.


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True. Neither of them loved it enough to live here.


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Ha! A+ comment.


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Sigh The Recall…It’s the only way to end this insanity cleverly disguised as a progressive movement steeped in fascist overtones.


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Fascist was the previous council majority. Fascist were the rude citizens at public comment being disrespectful, slanderous and threatening council members. Look where that got John Solu for his last outburst. Glad to see him resign from the planning commission because he felt unappreciated by his peers. Maybe he can join TBID.


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That was another example of someone who was working for the former Council majority and not the current one. Attacking one of your bosses is NOT smart.


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I missed this. when did it happen and what did he say?


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pay for unused sick time – i see this over and over again. i have never been paid for unused sick time. it was there if i got sick, but if i left, it was gone.

does anyone in the private sector get paid for unused sick time?


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effing unions!


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@nunsense yes everyone in the private sector gets paid for unused sick time, and the other parts of there severance deal because they are making so much less then executives in the private sector for this position.


They give job security and benefits so that they can pay 100’s of thousands of dollars less then they would get in the private sector.


Look at how much attorneys and department heads get paid for 20-100 million dollar businesses. And then come back and ask that question.


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I worked for several very large corporations based in San Francisco, and NONE of them paid departing employees for unused sick time.


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But how much did they make?

They probably had a team of attorney and each one made upward of

$200,000-$300,000 for managing a similiarly sized budget.


Thats why they were paid for there unused sick time.

Like I said you give job security and benefits so that you can pay $100,000 cheaper for quality help. You can’t get rid of these severance payments without paying a per hour contract city manager or city attorney.


Which we will be doing thanks to Irons at $200/hr for both of them and $300,000 a year for both the positions.


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Some corporations treat employees better than others. Also, your position in the corporation dictates what kind of severance package you get. Too bad, so sad, that you worked for those that didn’t treat their employees well.


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You missed my point however mbactivist, yes they may not have gotten paid for unused sick time, but they were probably making 200,000-300,000 each year at least. For handling that size budget they get paid considerably less then in the private sector so to bring qualified help they give benefits and job security.


It’s standard in the public sector and makes sense. Instead though we will now have a private attorney and manager making $150-$200 an hour and costing the city $300,000 a year. Irons must not have realized why we made these employees full time. Disappointing to say the least.


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I resent having to hear the ugliness from those who opposed any actions by the council members. grow up! this isn’t 7th graders at the water fountain. Every person who spoke at the Council meetings in a mean, nasty and awful way, and you know who you are, needs to apologize to the Councill/Mayor and those sitting in the audience (unknowingly), and the children and spouses who listen at home. You show no class. Well, lower class. LOL


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i agree. those people are the reason i couldn’t sign that petition. i might have if I that Radio Shack guy and the old council woman’s husband had not been involved. I dont know but I think those people might be crazy.


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Oh yes fishing village……all of our kids sit around watching channel 20 all day. LOL!!!!Sorry but my when my kids are not in school they are out swimming, surfing, and playing soccer.


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MBACT- I would love to see how you would react in a similar situation as Rob and Andrea went through. They DID show ultimate class and professionalism down to the wire. This was a case of defamation by silence.


I have not heard one single solitary accusation of either of them gaining any personal benefit from anything they did while employed at the city. What they did as executives representing the city, was at the direction of the “flavor of the day” politicians.


As to their benefits, pay, etc., you can take that up with the public sector as a whole.

I will say that until recently I also thought public employees received a higher than necessary pay. Now that I have witnessed what happens when you put politicians in power who have no idea of how to run an organization, I think some of the public employees are underpaid.


Now you can proceed with your analysis.


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most people don’t have ‘contracts’ anything like we’ve seen existed for Andrea and Rob. Who get’s that kind of severance pay, extras? The council/mayor who gave ‘away the store’ are long gone, but now the citizens of MB will pay and pay. We need to reexamine our employee contracts and the amount of money we are paying out. Who would have know? Andrea and Rob were ‘at will’ employees and knew they could be terminated at any time (I thought Yates was going to fire them, the way he treated them) so rudely. So now it is done with and we need to rethink hiring and how to make this more open to everyone who lives here and pays taxes. I’m looking forward to a new way of doing business in this town!


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Thats 100% false all public employees of similar positions have contracts just like this. The difference is normally the mayor and city council don’t completely botch the firing of them like Irons did. You either don’t hear about it or they leave on there own terms.


If you want to reexamine your employee contracts and not give out benefits and job security you are going to be paying over $300,000 a year for both those positions instead of 150,000. Which is exactly what we are going to do, is that what you want?


This whole thing would have been avoided if not for Irons complete incompetence.


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Botched? Planned? Bungled? Machiavellian? Inept? Dictator? Please pick one and stick with it.


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ALL of the above


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FV, you make this “contract” thing sound like a conspiracy between whatever council originally formulated the contracts and Schultz/Lueker. Is this not pretty much a standard contract that all cities have, or do you have some concrete evidence that these contracts are way out of the ordinary for a city employee?


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i would react by thinking of all the things I could do with my 100 g’s, like FIND A PLACE TO LIVE!!!


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I like the way Irons thanked both Lueker and Schultz for their service to Morro Bay, and wished them luck in their future endevors, that was a classy move…..oh, wait he didn’t say any of that, again he shows the true colors of the egotistical, pompous dictator he is.


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If their behavior toward Irons was as “classy” as that of their supporters, he would have been showing admirable restraint in saying nothing at all.


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Again, showing your ability to stir the pot by questioning their professional behavior, which you know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about, you weaken whatever point you’re trying to make.


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Do you have any proof that Schultz or Leuker were not classy?


They went forward with this complete botched firing, in which Irons even had the guts to deliberately lie and say that there was cause for firing the pair.


Watched the dragged out closing and still showed up to work, and city council meetings and did the job to the best of there ability. For three months.


Even there closing words for both of them were complete class acts.


Irons behavior through this entire thing was entirely classless and Redsoxman pointed out just one example of that.


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I think they were very classy. of course, when you have a hundred big one’s waiting for you, it’s not that difficult.


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