These new City Councilors are working hard, but they entered a mine field left behind for them by the prior City Council, who wanted to turn North Plains into North Hillsboro-style data centers and warehouses. After the former City Councilors lost the election but before they left office, they:

• Installed the architect of the massive expansion proposal, Bill Reid, as the new City Manager.

• Put a golden parachute of half his salary ($75,000) in his employment contract that he’d receive if he was fired without cause.

• Passed new rules that gave the new City Manager sweeping power over council agendas, meetings, and councilor communications.

• Continued to use your tax dollars on a lawsuit to defend the City’s use of outdated population projections in their housing plan - they want to grandfather in inflated and no-longer-accurate population growth so they could require the city to overbuild housing.

All of this and more were attempts to stifle the new City Councilors you elected from fulfilling the job you directed them to do: increasing government transparency and only approving growth if it’s needed, desired, and within the City’s means.

Your current City Council has good and responsible members. But the legacy of the former councilors’ sprawl agenda is systemic and extremely difficult to overcome.

For years, the city had been putting

At their meeting on June 15, City Council accepted the resignation of City Manager Bill Reid. It is not known for what transpired because he requested an executive session. However our viewpoint is that it was the right decision for many, many reasons. Mr. Reid:

• Had no prior experience in city management. His background before coming to North Plains was as a real estate economist for developers.

• Continued to plan an unnecessary 660-acre expansion for data centers and warehouses next to the homes and elementary school in Sunset Ridge, despite the city's strong opposition

• Wasted an estimated $866,000 on planning for expansion. We don't know how much because he...

• Hadn't completed an audit of the city budget for 4 years

• Hadn't addressed the 30 serious findings in the 2022 audit alone

• Hadn't completed an audit of the Urban Renewal District since 2019, while potentially spending URA funds on unauthorized projects like planning for a major city expansion.

• Denied URA grants to downtown businesses that the funding was intended for

• Consolidated city power and prevents oversight by appointing himself as Acting Finance and Planning Director, as well as City Manager

For these reasons and more, City Council did the necessary thing by accepting Mr. Reid’s resignation.

Following Reid’s departure, City Council appointed an interim City Manager in a process led only by former Mayor Dumbrow and the city attorney. They gave Council only 2 options and no ability to wait. That Interim City Manager left citing vague reasons, and City Council appointed a new Interim City Manager on 7/31, who has since been working to restore function to the city administration that Mr. Reid left behind.

Council turnover is common in small towns where volunteer councilors have high obligations. Both pro-sprawl and smart growth councilors departed in recent years for health, family, and work reasons.

It is unclear why some staff members left, but staff turnover is common when a top executive leaves. Staff turnover was more likely in North Plains where the departing City Manager had built a flat staffing structure with an unusual amount of power vested in himself as Acting Finance Director and Acting Planning Director.

‍A city, like any business, are required to do audits. Audits tell City Council what its starting balance so it can responsibly budget for the years ahead. They show the public how their tax dollars, revenue, and grants are being spent. And they’re a necessary oversight tool. In 2008, a former court supervisor was accused of embezzling $211,000 from North Plains and pleaded guilty to aggravated first-degree theft.‍‍ ‍

But in 2023, the legislature ended the fiscal penalty for cities that are delinquent in filing financial reports. Since then, North Plains has failed to file an audit (2022-2025). In the month since the former City Manager resigned, the city has made great progress on resolving this backlog, and we expect the 2022 audit to be released shortly. Sign up to our newsletter to hear about it.

A group calling itself the “real friends” of North Plains has been very active on social media and in sending expensive mailers. We do not know who runs the organization or how they are funded. They are not officially organized as a business, nonprofit, or political action committee. We do know that.

In our opinion, the recall petition is just an extension of special interests trying to usurp power to try one more time to force the city to grow beyond its means. The recall petitions were submitted by a pro-sprawl former City President Russ Sheldon and an ally of that cause. The arguments that they lay out are specious, not the councilor’s fault, or the result of the petitioner’s own actions. For example, the city stopped performing audits when Russ Sheldon was on City Council, and stopped performing audits for the Urban Renewal Agency while Mr. Sheldon was chair.

Unfortunately, it appears that the same special interests who are flooding people’s social media and mailboxes with aggressive and often inaccurate information are trying to get city residents to vote out councilors who are trying to fix the messes left by prior councilors. Most of the councilors in office before the 2024 election were trying to expand the city by more than twice its size to give a huge landfall profit to landowners, cheap land for expensive homes, and tax breaks to data centers and warehouses. That’s why the city voted for reform in 2024.

The City Councilors who joined after 2024 are working hard, but they entered a mine field left behind for them by the prior City Council who, in their last two months in office:

• Installed the architect of the massive expansion proposal, Bill Reid, as the new City Manager.

• Put a golden parachute in Mr. Reid’s employment contract so he’d get a big payment if he left.

• Passed new rules that gave the new City Manager sweeping power over council agendas, meetings, and councilor communications.

• Left all of the plans in place to reinstitute the massive 855-acre urban growth boundary expansion again if they ever regained power.

All of this and more were attempts to stifle the new City Councilors you elected from fulfilling the job you directed them to do: increasing government transparency and only approving growth if it’s needed, desired, and within the City’s means.