City manager’s memos allege deep rifts on Port Angeles City Council

PORT ANGELES — The city manager alleges that the seven-member City Council shows an “increasingly open and destructive display of disrespect for fellow council members.”

Mark Madsen also has accused unnamed council members of interfering with personnel and labor matters and with two police investigations.

Two Madsen memos — totaling four pages and made available to the Peninsula Daily News on Thursday — details apparently deep rifts among council members, leaving him to wonder out loud whether he can continue as city manager.

“. . . Certain council members are using their council voice to undermine the legitimate issues and programs supported by other council members, whom they don’t like,” Madsen wrote in the memos he distributed to council members on Tuesday.

Madsen identified no City Council members in his written comments.

He said “inappropriate council members intrusions into administrative matters” included:

  • “Interference with personnel and labor matters, including a pending candidate selection for a new deputy chief of police.”

  • “Intrusions in police investigations.”

    One of those investigations concerned a “criminal complaint case in which a citation had been issued, but which had not yet come before the court,” Madsen said.

    The other alleged council member interference concerned “a case where police responded to a disturbance call from an eatery/pub when the bar management ejected a patron from their establishment.”

    Madsen did not return calls Thursday asking for additional comment.

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