By Randy Kugler
First, some background on this report. After the failed Bond measure, I reached out to former Mayor Garry Bullard to discuss ways to make progress on the City Hall project and begin a healing process within the community. Garry suggested a meeting at his home with Mayor Scott. I agreed. We also agreed to not disclose our meeting so as to
avoid the distraction of unnecessary rumors of secret meetings on this important community project.
At the end of that meeting, I was asked how much funding I took from the Water Fund as overhead allocation for my salary when I was City Manager. From 30 years ago I gave what I recalled as an accurate answer of no funding from the Water Fund.
Later, I was researching the history of City overhead allocations from the Water Fund in my old Budget documents. I discovered that from documents that I had, I did indeed include Water Funds in my salary during my time as City Manager. On January 17, I sent
Garry and Mayor Scott an email that I needed to correct my statement at our meeting. I provide a detailed explanation to the question that was posed to me. On January 18, Mayor Scott replied to me thanking me for the correction and now researched explanation.
At the February Council meeting, Mayor Scott not only publicly disclosed that we had a meeting but made it appear to the audience that he had been intentionally misinformed by myself and initially attempted to prevent me from bringing up my email to him correcting my misstatement and his receipt and acknowledgement of it. This and other unfounded claims that he cited were his reasons that I was not appointed to the Budget Committee.
An audio transcript of the meeting as well as the emails mentioned above are available for public review at https://manzanitacitizensalliance.org/february-council-meeting/
There will be additional follow ups to this unfortunate and unnecessary incident on the Manzanita Citizens Alliance web site as information becomes available.
Please mark your calendars for the next City Council meeting on March 4 at the Pine Grove and continue to stay involved