Eureka City Clerk and Acting City Manager Pam Powell | Photo provided by Powell

Last week the City of Eureka announced that City Manager Dean Lotter is on administrative leave and that City Clerk Pam Powell would immediately assume the roles and responsibilities of acting city manager in the midst of the COVID-19 emergency.

In a phone conversation with the Outpost yesterday, Powell — who has been with the City of Eureka for nearly 30 years — discussed how she has been juggling the responsibilities of two city positions and how the City is responding to the budget impacts of the pandemic.

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How has your job been affected by this? What has your day-to-day been like lately?

You know, I always feel like I tell people ‘I’m a Jill of all trades and a master of none’ because of the nature of my job. In my regular position as city clerk to the City Council I have risk management as a duty and I oversee the IT [information technology] division for the city of Eureka. Now, with doing the city manager’s duties, keeping all those balls in the air keeps me pretty busy. 

But I have the department directors and all of them have just been super helpful. I can’t even thank them enough for the things that they are taking on on my behalf or keeping me apprised of. They couldn’t be more supportive during this time.

You’ve been with the city of Eureka for a very long time, I think probably the longest of anybody there. Have you ever had to do anything like this before, step in for any other roles or adapt in this way?

So I started in 1993 in the fire department as a temp, believe it or not. When I did become full time, I was a fire services officer and I was their emergency management coordinator. And so I learned a lot about emergency management in the fire department. We went through some earthquakes and and I was definitely able to learn a lot from those experiences.

When I came over to City Hall and I was in the city manager’s office as assistant to the city, I worked with the county OES in several activities and exercises and helped coordinate three opportunities for the county and the city to go back to Emmitsburg, Maryland, and participate in a community-specific exercise. The first one was in 1999 for an earthquake and then the second two, one in 2007 and one in 2016, those were both for tsunamis. And so I got so I have that experience in helping to manage emergency operations for the City of Eureka. That’s definitely been helpful with the pandemic.

And I’ve filled in for the city manager when they go on vacation. I’ve definitely held that role. I’ve been doing that since 2013. We would usually switch off between different department directors. But I seem to take it a lot because I’m right here in the office and I can help take things on as they come in. That was definitely something that I did.

Do you have any idea how long you might be acting as city manager? And is there any chance that you would be interested in taking over the position?

I’m in this role for at least for the next couple of weeks. We haven’t had a special meeting yet to discuss this position moving forward. I guess it’s a little premature because our current city manager is just on admin leave, and so it’s a little premature to be talking about filling it in the long term.

Considering that you have all of this experience with the city in emergency response and filling the city manager’s role when they are on vacation, why didn’t you apply for the city manager position initially?

Number one, I have a daughter who is also employed by the city. And if you are in any position that you would have to make a disciplinary decision — and everything always goes up the chain on a disciplinary issue to the city manager — that is an issue and our nepotism rules don’t allow for that. So I have never wanted to ask for an exception to that rule. That’s not my style. The policy and the rules are there for a purpose. But an exception has been made for me in my acting capacity. So for right now, we have a plan worked out of course, that I would defer [any discipline] to another director.

Secondly, I just really feel like my strength is helping from behind the scenes. That doesn’t mean I’m not comfortable taking on this role. I do want to convey that right now I think that having somebody in this acting or interim role that’s from within the organization makes sense, while we’re dealing with this COVID-19 issue. With the economic downturn that is hitting the City of Eureka, we need to be able to navigate that and deal with that with knowledgeable, well-trained staff who know the issues. And I do feel that’s something that I can bring to the organization in the next few months.

We’re also going to be navigating our ballot measure, measure Q, [a half-percent] sales tax that sunsets in 2021. We have to be looking at some type of tax measure in this next general election in order to even stay current with our current revenue projections. So it’s critical that every single one of us are aware of what the issues are and we can work together, that we do everything within our power to make sure that the City of Eureka can come through this economic downturn more successful. And we owe that to the residents.

That sort of addresses my next question about what the city is doing to prepare for and respond to the coming fiscal crisis. I’m wondering if you are looking at any particular budget cuts yet, or cuts to services.

We are doing everything we can not to cut services. We will need to reduce our budget in this next year and we’re working on identifying how we’re going to do that. All of last week and this week we’ve been, as a team, really analyzing our expenditures and our personnel. I think we have put out a request to all staff if they’re interested in doing what we call a “golden handshake” — basically, to retire early. There’s a number of ways we save when we offer that. Number one, that position becomes vacant and we won’t refill it. Secondly, if in the future, if we do fill that vacant position we hire someone who’s no longer on the books as a classic employee — which has a higher dollar retirement formula — and they come in as a PEPRA [Public Employee Pension Reform Act] employee — and that has a much less cost to the city for their retirement plan. However, this year, we would be keeping those positions vacant because that’s the only way we can accomplish true savings to our budget. And that’s going to be necessary. It will be at least two fiscal years before revenues are projected to even be back up to what they were a year ago.

Has the city applied for any emergency funding? Is there any hope of emergency funding helping to plug the gap?

We are working with League of California Cities, and they are working on behalf of cities everywhere. We’ve been asked to compile information and projected revenue loss and how much we have spent thus far on the pandemic. We’ve provided those to Assembly Member Wood and Senator McGuire. We’re asking the state for funding. At the federal level, cities [with populations of] 500,000 and up have received federal funding. But smaller communities and cities have not been included in that. We’re hoping in the next round of federal relief that smaller cities will be included. We’re doing everything we can to make those pleas and write the letters and make the state and federal officials aware of the plight of smaller cities.

We wanted to ask about [contracted brand management firm] Eddy Alexander and Eureka’s rebranding. I’m wondering if you know anything about that, if that’s going to be rolled out anytime soon.

Yes, the branding is close. They’ve settled on the logo and I believe they’re doing a few different things with colors and some finalizing the palettes that they use. But we’re going to meet on it next week, in fact. So, hopefully I’ll have a little more of a timeline for you.

The whole idea was to roll it out in a big public celebration in April and then the pandemic hit. So we were like, well, is there any way we could do some kind of parade or something that? We’ve decided that would probably not be a great way to go about it. So now we’re looking at doing a digital release in some form or fashion along with public display.

But we’d like to get that brand out sooner than later. We want to be ready with our branding for when people are able to travel, but only when the county health officer says it’s safe to do so. Plus I think the community is excited to see it. You know, we did this community survey and everyone had a lot of comments and they participated in it and the public is anxious to see what it looks like. So we want to get that out as soon as we can, but we also want to celebrate it too.

Is there just anything else that you’d like to add, something you feel like I didn’t cover or any message you’d like to give to the people of Eureka?

I have always felt lucky to be able to live in Eureka and work in Eureka. We have a lot going on for us. We just want to continue with the progress we’ve made over the last couple of years. I am proud of my city and I just hope to be able to live up to what the council expects of me, honestly.