City Manager Yvonne Quiring

Following a three hour special meeting Monday, council members discussed and agreed to essentially ignore employee grievances with a statement amounting to “Can’t we all just get along?”

Recently, 32 city employees signed two letters of no confidence in City Manager Yvonne Quiring. These letters were read publically to the council on September 27, 2010. Employee grievances were clearly specified as follows:

“The Management and Represented employees of the City of Fillmore are writing this letter to inform the Council of its displeasure with City Manager, Yvonne Quiring, that the employees have no confidence in Ms. Quiring's leadership, and our concern for the general welfare of the City under her direction.

Thirty-Two of the City's thirty-seven fulltime employees agree that they are being micromanaged, belittled, intimidated, given unclear direction, harassed, and fear retaliation for informing Council of the current status of their working environment. Management staff feels that Ms. Quiring has created a hostile work environment within which staffs ability to focus on and complete work has been stifled. Her contradictory management style consists of speaking kindly before a group of employees then holding closed door meetings wherein staff is unfairly berated bringing the morale of the entire City Hall to a now intolerable low.”

This statement of no confidence, also signed by top level employees such as City Engineer Bert Rapp, is unprecedented in Fillmore’s history. The official statement following Monday’s Special Meeting apparently ignored employee complaints:

“January 18, 2011
City Council Statement re: No Confidence Letter
The Council has taken this issue seriously and we have gone to great expense and effort to work through this process in a fair manner. We have to acknowledge that there are two sides to this story.

We have had an opportunity to review the five grievances and our legal counsel finds that “there are no facts, nor allegations of conduct by the City Manager that constitute unlawful conduct.” The City Council and City Manger are looking forward to moving ahead in a positive and constructive manner. We have confidence in the ability of the employees and City Manager to overcome past and future challenges in a professional manner.
We are all reminded that we are here to serve the public and that is our goal.”

Mayor Washburn added a personal comment: “I support ALL of our employees. I want them to feel empowered to grow and succeed in their positions. That requires effort and cooperation from all. This includes the Council, who as leaders of the community must role model that effort and cooperation to communicate and work for the benefit of the City and citizens. With that said, I realize that in these difficult economic times, employees fear pay concessions or possible layoffs as we see in so many other cities, i.e. Santa Paula and Ventura. We negotiated through our last budget deficits with few concessions and no layoffs. I think the City Manager deserves a lot of credit for that. She has been very sensitive to these issues but that has gone unnoticed. At the same time, I want to acknowledge that our employees are keeping the City running in a professional and efficient manner as always and I do appreciate that.
Gayle Washburn, Mayor”

Fillmore’s City Manager had this to say: “This has been hard on everyone. We have a common goal of serving the public and I look forward to moving ahead with staff.”

Former City Council Member Laurie Hernandez commented on the council’s statement: “I’m not surprised in the least [at the statement]. Neither the City Manager nor the council has done anything to improve the bad behavior on the City Manager’s part. Not once has she [Quiring] tried to bring staff together. She continues to hold closed door meetings with Mayor Washburn, Mayor Pro-Tem Brooks and Councilwoman Walker. She was hired to do a lot of things and one was MENTOR our employees. Now I laugh at that when I sit back and think of the interview process. She’s made a joke of the past council who hired her (which includes me) and the future council which blindly wants to ignore what is right in front of them. Good luck to our City and our employees. She has turned out to be such a disappointment for our community!”

Prior to entering the closed session, Councilman Steve Conaway asked Councilman Brian Sipes to recuse himself from participating in the meeting because the financial relationship (landlord-tenant) he has with the Manager. Sipes refused.

In her past position of City Manager, in the City of Lathrop, the same complaints were lodged, which finally ended with Quiring’s contract being bought out for more than $300,000. Reports state Quiring had approximately one year experience as city manager before being hired as Fillmore’s manager.