“Caleb, I have tried to mentor you for a long time, and I realize it has been a waste of time,” said Westcliffe Trustee Mark Dembosky to Town Manager Caleb Patterson last Thursday during a special meeting, and it seems that this sentiment was shared by the rest of the Board and the Mayor as none voiced opposition to Dembosky’s statement.
A meeting that was supposed to focus on clarifying the structure of the town of Westcliffe government structure ended with an executive session with Mayor Wenke reappearing after the session, stating that “Caleb Patterson resigned during the executive session.” However, Patterson disagrees with Mayor Wenke’s public statement and claims that the Board of Trustees gave him an ultimatum: that he resign during the executive session or be fired.
At the heart of the matter was a disagreement on how the town of Westcliffe had chosen in the past decades to organize itself according to the options laid out in Colorado Law. The Mayor and Board of Trustees felt that they did not have to follow state statutes regarding the organization of the Westcliffe government, but the town manager insisted that they did have to follow state law.
Roughly speaking, in Colorado, there are two major types of town or city governments: statutory and home rule. Westcliffe has always been a statutory town, so it falls under Colorado state statutes. Further, a statutory town can pick between a Trustee and a manager system where the town is administered by a professional manager hired by the elected body. This is the most common type of town or city government in Colorado. The other option is the form of government that Silver Cliff follows, which has a strong mayor form of government where the Mayor serves as the chief executive.
In the late 1980s, Westcliffe changed from a strong-mayor form of government to a trustee/manager system of government. However, over the decades and with a nearly constant turnover of town managers, the town of Westcliffe has now been operating under a hybrid model. It has a mayor and trustees but also has a town manager.
The core disagreement of the meeting last Thursday was a claim from the Board and Mayor that Patterson was not the chief administrative officer but merely a manager who was nothing more than an employee. Patterson acknowledged that that was their belief, but they were mistaken, and this needed to be cleared up by the Board because the hybrid model the town had adopted went against state law.
Trustees such as Dembosky and Mayor Wenke repeatedly made the incorrect claim that the town of Westcliffe was exempt from following state statutes regarding the town manager position. “People elect us to serve the town… they don’t elect the town manager,” Wenke stated. Patterson retorted, “That is not how the town is set up right now. You can certainly decide to change the form of government of Westcliffe, but state statute says that the Town Manager is in charge of running the town.”
Despite Patterson’s efforts to explain the options open to the Board, it was clear that they felt that they were exempt from the state statutes regarding government organization and job descriptions of the administrator and they grew increasingly agitated at Patterson.
What came as a surprise is that instead of talking about the structure of the town and getting advice from the town attorney regarding negotiations of the structure of the town, they entered an executive session that was not open to the public and opted to force Patterson to resign or be fired.
The Tribune has researched this topic, and it cannot find an ordinance ever passed that created or removed the administrator position and returned the town to a Strong Mayor form of government. In addition, going into an executive session about the organization of the town government but instead forcing the Town Manager to resign appears to break Colorado Open Meetings Laws.
The Tribune will continue to cover this matter.
– Jordan Hedberg
Photo Cutline: Trustee Mark Dembosky (left) and former Town Manager Caleb Patterson during a meeting in November. – Tribune photo by Jordan Hedberg