Palmer City Manager resigns amid outcry from city workers, residents

The Palmer City Council has accepted the resignation of now former Palmer City Manager Stephen Jellie. The announcement came at the end of an extended closed meeting with city council members during an emergency Palmer City Council meeting on October 9. His resignation was effective immediately.

“The council voted unanimously to accept the resignation with the severance terms in Jellie’s contract, which includes six months’ pay and certain extended benefits,” Palmer Mayor Steve Carrington said.

Jellie was the focal point of an emotional stretch of public testimony during Palmer City Council’s regularly-scheduled meeting October 8. Dozens of residents voiced their concerns about Jellie, who has been with the city for about 50 days. Issues included consolidation of services with other city and borough agencies, and the surprise announcement of the suspension of Palmer Police Chief Dwayne Shelton.

During the emergency meeting, Jellie spoke for about 10 minutes, with him voicing his frustration to the council.

“It’s interesting to me that the council has so many concerns, yet you’ve never discussed them with me. How would I possibly know what you did or didn't want me to do if you are not talking to me. It’s also interesting you’re holding me accountable for doing research and work on things that you asked me to do,” Jellie said, after coming under fire from city police and fire department workers when he began investigating a possible merger of emergency dispatch and other services with the city of Wasilla. There was no actual proposal for a merger and Jellie said earlier he was waiting for information from Wasilla as to its feasibility. “I’m not even sure why you didn't recommend holding off on the public discourse and the public comments until we took it to the budget, where we all discussed this should go, in the budget discussion.”

He said he had informed council members that he was investigating the arrangement as an efficiency measure and was encouraged by some of the council to pursue it. “Most of you said if there’s money to be gained from it, we should definitely study it.”

Mayor Carrington said that the council was aware of Jellie’s initiatives, although they were controversial with some city employees. “He was being a manager.”

Jellie voiced frustration at the apparent lack of support from the council during the previous meeting, saying:

“I didn’t hear any of you stand up last night and say ‘we told the manager to work on these things.’ I didn’t hear any of you say, ‘hey the manager’s been asked to look at all these functions.’”

Jellie also said that past decisions could impact the budget, such as the airport, staffing shortages in multiple departments, and the Water and Sewer Fund, which he said is $2.7 million in the negative. “That is money owed to your general fund. That is money you could be using to help pay for your library offset expenses. That money has been owed for quite some time with no plan to pay for it.”

Jellie addressed the passionate and sometimes emotional testimony made during the previous meeting, but said that as a manager, there are hard decisions that cannot be made on emotions, but rather facts.

“There are hard decisions to be made. There are hard topics to be addressed. There are things that require the City Manager to be able to function in a mode where I am bringing the facts. I am bringing the information to you. I am not bringing the emotion. I’m not bringing the passion. I’m certainly not bringing the personal impacts. That’s what you have all the people behind me to do. But you have to have the other. If you sit on that dais and make decisions based on people yelling, being upset and angry about something, you’re not going to make good decisions. You all know that.”

As for accusations that Jellie had been trying to assume various roles in the city government, he said those are unfounded.

“Accusations of trying to take over all the city government, acting in multiple positions are completely unfounded. And I will look forward to my day standing in front of a judge making the case. Unfounded. All of you on the board know that those are unfounded. You know I’m not acting as the police chief. You know I’m not acting as the fire chief. I don’t have an HR Director. I’m acting the position because I don’t have someone there, nor do I have anyone else to delegate it to. I’m certainly not acting as the city council. And not one time ever have I attempted to negotiate anything in place of the city attorney.”

There was no single issued that tipped the scale for the resignation but a big turnout of city public safety workers and some members of the public at a regular council meeting who were vocal in calling for Jellie’s departure obviously had an impact on city council members. Some called for an immediate resignation, but Mayor Carrington pushed for the proper process to be followed because Jellie had not had a chance to defend himself at the council meeting amid complaints about him were made in the audience participation part of the meeting during which only members of the public speak, and there is no mechanism for discussion or questions from the council, or for Jellie to defend himself.

After the announcement was made, the meeting was opened up to audience comments, with most saying thank you to the council for taking the time to meet and address concerns, and coming to the decision that was made.

"Thank you all for taking the time. You all look like you've gone through a lot," said Cindy Rau, Chaplain with the Palmer Fire and Rescue after the meeting reconvened following an extended executive session. "We truly appreciate you and what you've done for our community."

“I know that some of you disagree with the stance that certain members of the city took on this, but I want you to understand that you guys making this decision, it made it right,” said Richard Clark of the Palmer Police Department, who acknowledged that the decision to accept Jellie’s resignation did not come easily for the council. “I can tell just by looking at a lot of you in here that whatever happened in here wasn’t pretty. You guys deserve better.” Clark then asked “Can we have our chief back?”

The meeting was adjourned without comments from the City Council. The next regularly scheduled meeting for the Palmer City Council is October 22, with a special City Council meeting on October 15.