Employees allege retaliation by council
WESTMORLAND — The recent replacement of the locks on doors and filing cabinets at City Hall has raised the concerns of a pair of city employees who perceive the city’s actions as retaliation against them for having spoken out against the selection process for the recently-hired police chief.
City Clerk Sally Traylor said that the decision to change City Hall’s door and cabinet locks was reportedly authorized by a City Council vote in closed session on Oct. 4, amounting to a Brown Act violation, since the closed session agenda did not include an explicit item regarding the subsequent action.
“It’s something that should’ve been on the council agenda for the public to know about and discuss,” Traylor said.
The actions came as a surprise to Traylor, who is currently on a leave of absence. She said that she fears the changed door locks are a predecessor to her rumored eventual termination for having previously spoken out about the police chief’s selection process. “They are not communicating with me in any shape or form,” she said.
Traylor, a two-term publicly-elected city clerk, also is currently employed as the city’s finance officer, an atwill position. The closed session agenda for the council’s Oct. 4 regular meeting included only two items, one of which was a conference with a real property negotiator.
The second closed session agenda item announced the council’s intention to discuss and take possible action regarding the possible “discipline/dismissal/release” of an unidentified city employee.
Ultimately, the council took no reportable action regarding either closed session agenda item, said city attorney Mitch Driskill.
If Traylor had truly believed a Brown Act violation occurred, she should’ve contacted him or taken other measures she is well aware can be taken to remedy the situation, he said. The Brown Act governs the rules and procedures of publicly-elected bodies.
The city’s decision to replace the locks on the doors at City Hall was an administrative action prompted by the fact that the locks hadn’t been replaced in a while and a desire to keep the doors in proper working condition, Driskill said.
The administrative action was also based partly on a reported shortage of keys as a result of Traylor’s absence, as well as the possibility that an untold number of additional keys were in the possession of untold people, he said.
The administrative action was also characterized by Driskill as being no different than the city adopting changes to the Public Works Department’s landscaping duties.
“That level of administration does not really require a vote in any case,” he said.
Aside from the changed door locks, a lock was also changed on a filing cabinet that contains employees’ personnel files, while additional locks were installed on filing cabinets that previously had none. The replacement of the various locks was initiated Friday and finished Monday.
City Hall office clerk Sarah Garcia said she too would have preferred that the council would’ve advised the public in advance of its consideration of replacing the locks and its subsequent approval of the action during closed session.
Currently, only Mayor Larry Ritchie and police Chief Perry Monita are in possession of keys to City Hall and the filing cabinets, requiring one of them to unlock the building to let Garcia in, as well as lock it after she departs.
Typically, filing cabinets in use will be unlocked at the start of the day and locked again at day’s end.
Garcia had also joined Traylor in publicly speaking out against what both had perceived as a biased and nontransparent selection process for the police chief’s position filled by Monita on Sept. 5.
Garcia was also publicly in favor of a departmental reorganization that had temporarily led to the promotion of a few officers in August.
Those promotions, which reportedly did not result in additional compensation for the officers, were subsequently characterized by Driskill as an illegal action undertaken by Councilwoman Mary Ann Monte Smith and rescinded by the council on Sept. 20.
The police chief’s recent hiring, the rescinded departmental reorganization, as well as a recall effort targeting Ritchie and council members Henry Graham and Ana Beltran, have exposed an apparent rift amongst both elected and appointed city officials as well as the community.
“I feel as if I am being targeted and this is their way of retaliating against me for speaking up and defending the Police Department,” Garcia said. “They are making my work environment hostile.”