SEQUIM — A gross misunderstanding between Sequim City Councilman Ken Hays and Police Chief Robert Spinks led to an extensive, expensive investigation of a city planner last year.
Frank Needham, Sequim’s capital projects manager since March 2005, was the subject of a months-long investigation by Davis Grimm Payne & Marra, a Seattle labor-law firm Spinks hired last fall.
The final bill for the firm’s 59.4 hours of work — by lawyers charging $185 and $215 per hour — came to $11,249, interim City Manager Linda Herzog confirmed.
Spinks asked the firm to conduct its investigation after Hays, an architect elected to the City Council in November 2007, raised concerns over remarks he suspected Needham had made about him and two city projects: the proposed James Center auditorium near Carrie Blake Park and the long-hoped-for new City Hall.
According to the 12-page report from Davis Grimm attorney Amy Plenefisch, Hays had previously worked with Arai Jackson, Sequim’s contract architecture firm.
Rich Murakami, a partner in the firm, is the city’s consultant on its City Hall project, a project that has yet to find a site after years of searching.
Blacklist suggested
Hays, the report says, suspected that a city staffer had some years ago told Murakami that Hays’ services should not be used in the new City Hall project.
Hays also suspected the staffer of saying the city shouldn’t use him if and when Sequim builds a new police station.
“Mr. Hays also claimed that [the staffer] had ‘repeatedly slandered’ him,” Plenefisch writes.
The attorney also notes that “a higher standard of fault” exists when the person allegedly “slandered” is a public figure, as Hays is.
“At the time that Mr. Needham is alleged to have made these statements, Mr. Hays had already declared his candidacy for public office,” and had become a public figure.
Needham and Hays also had differences, the report says, when it came to planning for expansion of the James Center for the Performing Arts — now an outdoor stage and rehearsal hall at the Water Reuse Demonstration Site off Blake Avenue.
The Sequim City Band hopes to build on a 500-seat concert hall, which would need parking, an access road and city utilities; the band wants the city to operate the hall as it does the existing James Center bandshell.
Before the city can sign any kind of operating agreement, it must clear its plans with the state Department of Ecology, whose grants helped fund the Water Reuse Demonstration Site.
Contacting Ecology
According to Plenefisch’s report, a city planner contacted Ecology to discuss the James Center’s impact on the site and whether the expansion would comply with Ecology’s regulations.
“According to Mr. Hays, ‘contacting the DOE is something you never do because it complicates things,'” Plenefisch writes.
The law firm’s report also says that Hays’ complaints “focused on performance issues.”
Plenefisch and other lawyers interviewed several who work with both Hays and Needham, and who said the issues are “the result of a personality conflict.”
Ultimately, the investigation finds that Hays’ concerns about slander were based on hearsay, and that it was appropriate for a city planner to discuss the James Center with the Department of Ecology.
The city of Sequim has paid its bill to Davis Grimm and considers the matter closed, Herzog said last week.
Needham did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the investigation.
But Sequim resident Patricia Allen, upon reading Plenefisch’s report, wrote to Hays earlier this month, saying he should reimburse the city for the Davis Grimm fee.
Allen said that if Hays called for the investigation of a city staffer — which found no wrongdoing — Sequim’s taxpayers shouldn’t be liable for the cost.
Manager’s response
Allen received a response last Tuesday from Herzog.
“We, too, regret that $11,000 of city dollars were spent, but we take very seriously the concerns brought to our attention about actions by city employees that may be inappropriate,” the interim manager wrote.
Sequim City Attorney Craig Ritchie said Thursday that there’s no legal basis for Allen’s call for Hays to reimburse the city.
Anyone — council member or otherwise — can complain about a city worker, Ritchie said. It’s up to the city manager how to respond.
Spinks, when asked why he opted to hire a Seattle law firm, said Sequim has a longstanding relationship with Davis Grimm, and that a city of Sequim’s size doesn’t have the staff to do “detailed personnel investigations.”
Didn’t want probe
The trouble with all of this, according to Hays, is that he never wanted an investigation of Needham.
In an interview on Thursday, he called Davis Grimm’s probe “a perversion of the public process for political purposes,” and perhaps an attempt by the longer-serving City Council members to embarrass him.
Hays has often disagreed with the three members who’d been on the council for years before he took office: Paul McHugh, Walt Schubert and Bill Huizinga.
Hays added that he and Mayor Laura Dubois, another newer council member, met with Spinks to discuss Needham.
“I wouldn’t call what I said ‘complaints.’ I would call them ‘concerns,'” Hays said.
He added that since Spinks is close to some of the longer-serving council members, the then-city manager may have called for the law firm’s investigation to “make me look bad.”
Spinks defended his decision by saying:
“It was my duty to take any complaint, whether it was from a citizen, an employee or an elected official to be a significant matter.”
Hiring an outside firm “is prudent and a common sense approach,” he said.
Spinks deferred then to Herzog, who took over in December as interim city manager while Spinks went to Seattle to have a benign tumor removed from his auditory nerve.
He returned to his post as police chief Feb. 9.
Herzog tread carefully when asked whether she would have hired a law firm to address Hays’ concerns.
“You’re in a highly politically charged moment when one of your elected officials brings questions or complaints of a city employee,” she said.
“It would be quite difficult to find an individual within [city government],” who could investigate a colleague.
Ritchie, the city’s lawyer, doesn’t do labor cases, Herzog added.
Another way
Yet she said she might have chosen another way to address Hays’ concerns, had she been city manager when he brought them forward.
Months after the probe was completed, Hays is still exasperated — partly because he said he didn’t see Davis Grimm’s report until about six weeks ago, long after it was done.
He calls the whole thing “bizarre.”
As for Needham, Hays said, “My relationship with Frank is better than ever. I’m a big boy; Frank and I have learned to get along.”
Well into his second year on the City Council, Hays said he understands that it’s not his role to “interfere with staff” as they review proposed development.
“I let [Needham] do his job,” he said.
Hays said he understands, too, that the Department of Ecology must approve of plans for the James Center concert hall.
As for his relationship with the men he calls the “veteran councilors,” Hays said he wants the future to differ from the past.
“What I’m after is dialogue,” he said, and rather than lengthy lawyers’ reports.
_________
Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com
