Why? Cloudcroft Mayor Calls it Quits
Village Clerk Julie Pinson resigned, shortly followed by Mayor Craig Turner. What happened? What's next?
Why did Craig Turner suddenly resign as Cloudcroft mayor this week?
Just a few weeks short of his first anniversary as mayor, Turner seemed to enjoy the job and embraced the challenges of getting the village back on track.
Then he quit.
His sudden resignation is preceded by shifting council dynamics, the resignation of Village Clerk Julie Pinson, and the council’s reluctance to approve a fifth village office position for a financial clerk.
Only a few days before the December 5th Special Meeting, Turner told the Reader he “felt like a failure” in light of Pinson’s resignation. “The normal responsibility of the leader is to give his people the resources and tools to win. And if you don’t do that, you’re failing as a leader. I’m failing as a leader, I think.”
“I can’t give them the resources that they need. And you might say, well, it’s not your vote, it’s the trustees’ vote, but I must be doing something wrong to not convince them that we need help.”
Logging Out
Slightly more than an hour into the special meeting held Thursday night, Turner addressed the audience, concluding with the announcement, “Village, I am stepping down as mayor.” Turner then asked Police Chief Schoolcraft to escort him to his office, where he collected his things and gave Mayor Pro-tem Jim Maynard the log-in information necessary to perform his duties in the office.
According to state procedure, Pro-tem Maynard serves as interim mayor until the council votes for an appointee. An appointed mayor is eligible from any qualified elector in the village, including the council members.
A Special Council Meeting is set for Tuesday, December 10th, at 6:00 p.m., and the first order of new business on the agenda is appointing a new mayor.
In September, Trustees Foster, King, and McCoy called for Trustee and Pro-tem Maynard to step down from office.
The Backstory: What’s Been Cooking
Our Council meeting coverage in November noted the development of friction over certain personnel issues.
Before that, the council voted down the mayor’s Mexican Canyon Trestle lighting proposal, citing costs.
On Monday, December 2nd, Village Clerk Julie Pinson resigned; read her letter of resignation in full.
In the Thursday night special meeting, the council, mayor, and even the crowd hashed out their differences.
At that meeting, Turner decided to step down due to struggles with the trustees on staff issues.
On Saturday, the Reader contacted the former Mayor to learn more about his decision. He declined to talk for a few days, saying he was “still processing all of this.”
What Was Said
During the Thursday special meeting, the council (and, in an interesting change of pace, spouses in the audience) volleyed on the circumstances of Village Clerk Julie Pinson’s resignation.
Gail McCoy: “Sir, can I ask you a question? In your opinion, why do you think our past clerk resigned from her position?”
Craig Turner: “Do you want me to be honest with you?”
McCoy: “Sure.”
C. Turner: “She resigned because of the heat that she gets from the trustees."
Tabitha Foster: “Can you explain?”
C. Turner: “Someone working for four and a half months and getting significant pushback because the books might not be perfect, getting pushback because wording may not be perfect in something. Again, she's been doing the job for four and a half months. That's why, I just said a moment ago, I think we need to have clear expectations of what we want (from) the clerk. What do we expect that person to be able to do after six months? What do we expect that person to be able to do after a year? People who are going to make mistakes, we need to have clear expectations.”
Tim King: “I would say we had clear expectations. I had very clear expectations. I was involved in the interview process, and those expectations were not met early on. I should have mentioned things sooner, but I didn't. I regret that. But expectations were not met the next time we knew this. We had to hire somebody with years of experience, possibly a clerk. We're probably going to have to pay more money. And that's my feeling. I had totally very clear expectations, and they were not met.”
Foster: “I don't believe that the pushback is correct because when Trustee Maynard explained that the minutes have to be correct, that is a state statute. That is also a village ordinance. And he was 100% correct in 100 years from now, if somebody reads our minutes and says, "Oh, well, Bri and Matt walked the park." That doesn't give any clear indication. And that wasn't him being critical. That was him giving her constructive criticism of how the minutes were supposed to have been taken.”
“I don't think that we gave any pushback to where, you know, I mean, the public's here. I don't know that any of them ever saw any yelling at her in the council meeting and telling her that she did a horrible job. It was when we found out that things were not done the way that they were supposed to be done, we brought that up. And is that not how we're supposed to do that?”
Phyllis Turner: “Not in public.”
Foster: “What?”
P. Turner: “Not in public.”
King: “Well, I don't know if you remember the last meeting I requested an executive session. And that was denied. I did not respond to an email, which I should have, but the four of us voted on limited personnel matters. Just basic limited personnel matters. We didn't have that this time. We haven't had an executive session to go back and talk about this stuff. So now it's in public.”
Foster: “And back to the comment from the public section. When we're asked to approve these minutes and the minutes are not correct, that's where we have to say that the corrections that need to be made. It was not being critical. It was how are we supposed to relay to her in this open meeting, that the meetings that we were supposed to approve were not the correct minutes.”
P. Turner: “Was this the first time they had been incorrect?”
McCoy: “I don't think we had anything from before right now, but I'd like to ask, you know, you mentioned earlier that the citizens come first. And that's exactly right. The citizens come first. And that's why we're here. We found some things that were not correct. We found some things that were not correct that need to be addressed. And that's why we asked for an executive session. But we want to give the public, you as the taxpayers, need to know that we're here and we're going to handle the money the best we know how. We're the fiduciary committee up here, and that's the finance committee, and we're here to handle the money.”
P. Turner: “So isn't it more effective if you go through the hierarchy? Like the mayor is the administrator with the staff, the council is to approve policy and create policy and needs to administrate it. And if there are issues, instead of having a big adversarial event at a meeting that the Cloudcroft Reader says, ‘Chilly November meeting.’ It was quite obvious there was a lot of stuff, unknowns going on.”
Gail Percich (spouse, Tim King): “If you're going to sit up there, you need to have broad shoulders and you cannot have thin skin. You have to be able to take a lot.”
Later, after discussion with Attorney Jeff Rhodes on what issues allow for executive sessions, Jim Maynard said, “One of our problems is our accounts have not been reconciled. We are operating without a current annual budget.”
Maynard: “Some of that is inherited; some of that has been perpetuated. I can't imagine any of us not reconciling our accounts. To simply look at a balance and say well we have plenty of money. Okay. But municipal budgets are line item allocations. The complex task is one of those that I think would be a high priority with a clerk. They are the custodian of the community records. Your cash accounts are a community record. Your budgets are a community record. But there's some fundamentals that they must do. We are handling public money without knowing how much public money we're handling.”
Earlier in the proceedings, Mayor Turner pushed to authorize a fifth village office position, a financial clerk.
The Trustees weren’t racing to embrace the idea. There seemed to be a general agreement that four office positions had been sufficient in past years.
Maynard: “In the past, we've always had someone charged with the Accounts Payable. But this was incorporated with a deputy clerk, a PNZ clerk. We've operated as long as I've been here with around four people in that office. We're still a budget of about 2.2 or 2.4 million dollars with 17 or 18 employees—it's just not that big.”
Turner warned that the village faced potential oversight from the state for its past reporting deficiencies:
“I went to finance and budget training two weeks ago. And I'll just let the village know that there are approximately 15 communities throughout New Mexico that are in dire straits as far as the Department of Finance and Administration (DFA) is concerned. They did not name these municipalities, but they did give the steps, the things that are behind, that would put you in that category. And Cloudcroft is in that category. If the state sends somebody to step in, we're talking millions of dollars versus the salary (of a clerk.) (It) pales (in comparison) if we lose our grants, the ability to get grants, and the ability to get loans.”
“I can see very clearly I'm not going to win this battle.”
Vacating Seat
After further discussion on the role of the clerk, the mayor shifted to talking about how he viewed the standoff between himself and the trustees.
“Phyllis, I'm sorry. When I took this position, I had the deepest thoughts in mind for this village.
I love this village, a lot of the people love this village, and a commitment that I gave to the village, was that I would be here every day, working, not absent, not just coming in occasionally, and I have done that.
I've given everything I have so far to the village, and I respectfully disagree with the trustees.
We are where we are today because we do not have trained people to do the job. And when you have turnover we're having, it's impossible to train someone to do the job. So many of the things that you guys are requesting, and again, I respectfully disagree that you just can't pop in here and start doing it.
In my previous profession, pharmaceuticals, we didn't consider a rep trained until they'd been on the job for two years.
Again, I go back to my original comment about the trustees' expectations for our clerk, or for any position. I think that's something that the trustees will have to get their hands around so that whenever we're interviewing a clerk, we can let that person know what the expectations are. Six months, we expect you to do this without mistakes, whatever the case may be.
But I've done my best to be articulate and share what we did with everyone.
I have made mistakes with some things I've done that I wish I hadn't done. But for the most part, I've done my very best. I know where we are right now.
I know we need more help—I'm here every day—so I'll respectfully disagree with the trustees about that. With that said, I also know the village's financial situation right now, and if we don't complete these budgets and reports, someone will step in and do it for us.
And that's not what any of us want, I think, but you can't just do it; you gotta be trained on how to do it, and no one's ever been trained on how to do it.
So, with that said, because I do disagree and I believe that we should have more help, y'all do not believe that, and that's fine. That’s a beautiful thing about our government, that's a beautiful thing about the way we run our government.
With that said, Village, I’m stepping down as mayor. Chief, if you’ll escort me to my office, I’m going to pick my stuff up.”
Surprise. Communication Breakdown
Few, if anyone, saw Turner’s decision coming.
By all accounts, Turner seemed to relish the job and attention. And one year into the role, he appeared to have the general backing of the community—but not the full backing of his staff recommendations by the trustees. Three trustees’ ability to kill a mayor’s staff recommendation appears to have frustrated Turner.
Mayor Pro-tem Maynard told the Reader:
“I was surprised (Craig resigned). I have said he's been a great mayor and has done a lot of good things. The inexperience of the group—it is a huge challenge that I'm not sure he fully understood. I think it's much easier to criticize the mayor than it is to be the man. That is something I've learned over 30 years. You will catch all the responsibility and only some of the authority. That's what we've represented tonight.
I wish he had not resigned. I think that there were other options.”
Next Meeting’s Action Items
In short order, the trustees must take decisive action and choose a captain for the ship.
A Special Council Meeting is set for Tuesday, December 10th, at 6:00 p.m., with “Appointment of Mayor” as the first order of new business on the agenda and a closed session regarding personnel matters to wrap things up.
The council must take care of its first order of new business, clearly and expeditiously appointing Cloudcroft’s new mayor. The council can’t afford to trip on their first step, post-resignation.
The Reader will attend and report.
The live stream broadcast of the Special Meeting on the Village of Cloudcroft’s Facebook page went dead before Turner’s step-down announcement. Hear the audio from the Reader’s iPhone meeting recording.
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