By Brenna Wiegand
“Enough is enough, Mr. Mayor,” was the message delivered en masse by the Silverton City Council Dec. 6 in its 6-1 vote to censure Mayor Stu Rasmussen.
Rasmussen later called the move “an ambush” … “cooked up in private” by a “kangaroo court.”
Armed with the November issue of Our Town Monthly, council members Kyle Palmer, Bill Cummins and Dennis Stoll challenged the verity of Rasmussen’s statements in an article on his reelection. In it, Rasmussen lambastes council members with accusations of being “all too quick to rubber-stamp city staff recommendations” and city leaders at large for “fiscal irresponsibility” and “giving only lip service to supporting the local economy.”
All of the councilors who spoke revealed longstanding concerns with Rasmussen’s public statements about city government and his fitness to lead the council and the city.
Councilman Kyle Palmer initiated the discussion, starting with Rasmussen’s published remark that “the high school could have handled” a $24,000 upgrade of the city website recently awarded to a Kansas firm.
City Manager Bryan Cosgrove reminded Rasmussen of his report during the last budget process forecasting the cost of the project – and that design is a small part of what the proposal brings.
“The difficult part is the storage, the 24/7 security and having modules that have already been invented because of other governmental agencies needing the same thing,” he said.
Subsequent to the meeting, Rasmussen scoffed at the explanation, saying that all of those features are a common part of website design and operation.
“It’s not like we’re reinventing the wheel,” he said.
Palmer next cited the mayor’s contention that neither one of Silverton’s screen printers was offered a chance to bid on a batch of T-shirts supporting the local skate park, a job carried out by a Woodburn company.
“I made some phone calls and in 10 minutes basically found out the exact opposite information from what you quoted,” said Palmer. The two remained at loggerheads on this question.
Councilor Bill Cummins stepped in to say that the city is merely a conduit for such funds anyway.
“If we’re going to start dictating through the city where those dollars for businesses go, we need to dictate where the dollars go for charitable contributions; I don’t think we want to do that,” he said. “…but here we are reading quotes in the paper as if the city has not done their due diligence and that’s just not true.”
Palmer said such comments before the public are troubling and in direct violation of council protocol calling for careful speech about council decisions.
Rasmussen said such a policy is better suited to another country where free speech was not an option; that he would rather choose civil disobedience.
When Rasmussen refused to say he planned to follow this protocol in the future, Palmer called for the censure, carried by the rest of the council.
“The citizen’s right to free speech is the same one the press has through the First Amendment,” Rasmussen said a few days later – and on the local TV news. “Any council policy in violation of the United States Constitution cannot stand.”
Dennis Stoll, concluding 10 years on the council, expressed heartfelt gratitude and respect for the many people with whom he served and who’d shown he and his wife Genie overwhelming support, first in electing them Silverton First Citizens and then at the death of their son in September.
Though they took on a different tenor, Stoll’s words were just as strong when he turned to address the mayor.
“…Sixty percent of the voters voted against you; it seems to me that would indicate the public is satisfied with city staff and council performance, though you may disagree,” he said. “…Become a leader; don’t just stir the pot and step back and take no action.”
The censure illustrates the ongoing friction between mayor and council and does not appear to have achieved its intended effect. Rasmussen stands by his statements. City council and staff feel buffeted about and derailed from the work at hand by time spent rectifying the damage done by what they consider half-truths or untruths put forth by the mayor – and it doesn’t show signs of stopping.
“I’m hoping cooler heads will prevail and the council will reconsider and rescind this censure before it gets blown all out of proportion,” Rasmussen said. “Such a blatant infringement on a citizen’s constitutional rights cannot be tolerated in our free society.”
“He’s got a choice to make,” Palmer said. “If he wants to be the person who complains, there’s a market for that in this country. But if that’s his priority, I’m not sure why he ran for office.”
