More evidence that Mayor Julie Hoy wanted previous city manager gone for no good reason

Salem Mayor Julie Hoy is a habitual liar.

In “Mayor Julie Hoy lied about not wanting City Manager Stahley gone. That’s her third lie about Stahley.,”I wrote about three lies Hoy spouted on a single subject, how she orchestrated an illegal scheme to get rid of Keith Stahley, the city manager at the time, that got Hoy in trouble with the Oregon Government Ethics Commission.

I described Hoy’s third lie.

Lie #3: Hoy claimed that her motivation in talking with city councilors about Stahley’s employment status was his performance audit that showed some deficiencies in his management style. But this wasn’t true, since Hoy wanted Stahley gone for reasons that had nothing to do with the performance audit.

We know about the third lie because Joe Siess of the Salem Reporter wrote a great recent story, “Months of private counseling between Julie Hoy and former city manager preceded his abrupt resignation.”

Here’s an excerpt from the Salem Reporter story.

However, the mayor’s explanation is at odds with newly released ethics commission records and interviews with Nishioka and former Mayor Chris Hoy.

The documents show that Councilor Vanessa Nordyke and Nishioka both described to ethics investigators the animus Julie Hoy had toward the city manager.

Nordyke recently announced she is running for mayor against Hoy.

Chris Hoy told Salem Reporter in a recent interview that the city manager confided in him, sharing that his relationship with the incoming mayor was problematic from the start.

…Nishioka, the current council president, described to ethics investigators the strain evident even then between the restaurant owner and the city manager.

“Even when she (Julie Hoy) was running [for Mayor], I knew that she would do everything possible to try to have him removed,” according to an ethics investigation account of her March interview.

Today the Statesman Journal ran a story by Whitney Woodworth, “Salem city manager takes on critical leadership team audit,” that describes how the new city manager, Krishna Namburi, dealt with the management problems that Mayor Hoy falsely claimed were the reason she wanted the old city manager, Keith Stahley, removed from his position.

It turned out that what Namburi did to deal with problems found in the City of Salem leadership team audit could easily have been handled by Keith Stahley, if Hoy’s scheme to get rid of him by going against Oregon’s public meetings law hadn’t succeeded in forcing Stahley to resign. For example:

The audit pointed to the city manager having 12 direct reports instead of the standard practice of having five to eight direct reports. Auditors also said staff reported the city manager getting bogged down in smaller tasks instead of focusing on bigger picture strategy.

Namburi reorganized the leadership team, which now includes herself and eight direct reports.

Well, that was easy. I’m sure Stahley could have just as easily done the same thing, given his management experience. Here’s how a City of Salem press release described that experience in a July 2022 news release announcing the hiring of Stahley as city manager.

Keith Stahley has served as the Assistant City Manager for the City of Olympia, Washington, since 2019.  Prior to serving as the Assistant City Manager, Keith served as Olympia’s Community Planning and Development Director for 14 years. Keith received his Master of Public Administration degree from Florida Atlantic University, his Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree from Syracuse University, and is an International City/County Management Association Credentialed Manager (ICMA-CM).

Mayor Hoy’s personal distaste for Stahley caused Salem to lose an experienced, competent, and successful city manager. A December 2024 story in the Statesman Journal, also by Whitney Woodworth, is titled “Takeaways from Salem leadership performance audit: Poor communication, overworked staff.” The story describes the Enterprise Leadership Team that was the subject of the audit by an outside consulting firm.

The Enterprise Leadership Team includes City Manager Keith Stahley, Deputy City Manager for Community Services Scott Archer, City Attorney Dan Atchison, CFO Josh Eggleston, Fire Chief David Gerboth, Public Works Director Brian Martin, Deputy City Manager for Enterprise Services Krishna Namburi, Community Planning and Development Director Kristin Retherford, Police Chief Trevor Womack, Chief Strategic Initiatives Manager Courtney Knox Busch and Homelessness and Human Rights Manager Gretchen Bennett.

So the performance audit wasn’t focused solely on Stahley, even though he was responsible for the overall management of the City of Salem. It also included current city manager Krishna Namburi, plus Dan Atchison, Gretchen Bennett, and Courtney Knox Busch — all three of whom are part of the eight direct reports to Namburi.

If Hoy hadn’t engaged in her illegal machination to get rid of Stahley, a lot of expense, time, and trouble would have been avoided by the City of Salem. Here’s an excerpt from the above-linked Statesman Journal story about the performance audit.

A finalized version of the report will be presented to the city early next year. Stahley told the Statesman Journal he appreciated the input and was working to move forward.

“While I don’t agree with all the comments and recommendations in the Preliminary Enterprise Leadership Performance Audit, I am always interested in feedback that will help us improve our service delivery and help make us a stronger and more resilient organization,” Stahley said.

But Mayor Hoy never allowed Stahley to make those changes. She got Stahley to resign in an illegal fashion without giving Stahley and the City Council a chance to address the performance audit, because — from what I’ve heard — Stahley stood in the way of Hoy being able to do some inappropriate things.