What happened at City Hall this week is nothing short of tragic. The public statements from the City are short on detail with the goal to minimize damage to the City’s and Glenn Akromoff’s reputations, but people deserve to know what really happened, so I am offering this personal account of facts and opinion. Four Councilmembers are responsible, and rest of Council and City staff are still reeling at the damage they have done. Waters, Bishoff, Munslow, all Councilmembers with less than one year experience, and former mayor McEvoy, conferred in private to dismiss the City Manager with a motion to be introduced at Tuesday’s Council meeting and a 4-3 vote, with no specification of cause. The best possible outcome was to instead accept an involuntary resignation with severance pay.

There is no plausible explanation for their decision, and I can only attribute the action to their demonstrated and consistent lack of understanding of the functions, policies, and protocol of city government. Glenn was an incredibly smart, honest and thoughtful City Manager, had complete support of the City staff and rest of Council, in just 18 months had returned the City from dire financial conditions to a very secure financial position, and had us well on our way to an exceptional foundation of sound policies and long range plans. Even if these Councilmembers had philosophical differences with his management style, we have a process for performance evaluation to appropriately deal with changes in personnel and succession planning. They bypassed this process and instead left us with no City Manager, no Finance Director (an excellent candidate was to have been offered the position this week), and a Chief of Police now forced to handle much more than he should have to. This was, at best, the irresponsible action of four people, which will have impacts on thousands of people for years to come.

I am truly devastated by the loss of Glenn’s leadership and the very positive, professional changes he was making in Normandy Park. I am deeply concerned about how we move forward from here, and the long term ramifications of this unnecessary action. Reports that I had resigned were, however, completely false and presumptuous. My reaction of shock and dismay in Council Executive Session, or comments akin to, “F--- it, I give up,” in a private conversation in a parking lot do not constitute resignation from elected office. I apologize if anyone was given reason to doubt my commitment due to these rumors. I remain thoroughly dedicated to my responsibility and service to the residents and staff of Normandy Park. As my 13 year old son noted, I’ll just have to work twice as hard now to help fix this.
They say you can’t fix stupid, but now we have to try, and to mitigate the tremendous loss and damage done at the whim of three inexperienced councilmembers and one who ought to have known better.

Councilmember Stacia Jenkins
December 19, 2014
stacia.jenkins@ci.normandy-park.wa.us