Councilmember, Moses Lake mayor discuss conduct

MOSES LAKE — Moses Lake Councilmember James Liebrecht said he was uncomfortable with how Mayor Ron Covey runs meetings, triggering a discussion about how council sessions are held.

Liebrecht started by accusing Covey of “barking” at the council during meetings.

“I see people in the audience just cringe,” Liebrecht said at the Tuesday council meeting. “I see members of our staff and members of our council just kind of freeze up a little bit and afraid to say anything and I’m sure you don’t mean it that way.”

He said he was concerned with the councilmembers not being allowed to speak about issues when they want to.

“You need to also let council have somewhat of an opinion,” he said. “I know you’re very outspoken. No one seems to want to rattle that too much.”

Liebrecht said Covey is a good mayor but said he finds it difficult to come to meetings because of how he is treated.

“Would you consider my feelings and not take it personally?” he asked. “I don’t want this to get out of hand with myself, make a scene or anything like that.”

“I hope you take that not as criticism, but as help,” Liebrecht said. “I’m just talking to you man-to-man.”

He said he was not speaking on behalf of the rest of the council.

Covey said over the past two weeks he’s been speaking with City Manager Joe Gavinski about how he can better conduct council meetings with regard to losing control or getting off task. The discussion was prompted after council had an unstructured, lengthy discussion about a garage permitting process at a previous council meeting.

“After (that) last meeting I think I heard three of you say ‘boy that just went on forever.’”

He said it’s important to him to give all councilmembers a chance to voice their opinion and ask questions about an issue, but at the same time he tries to keep council on track with procedures such as making a motion before speaking in depth about an issue. He said the procedures are important to ensure council gets their business done within the time they have.

“My number one job is to control and guide these council meetings,” Covey said. “That’s my responsibility. I run the council meeting. I try to do it in a way that keeps us on task, keeps us moving forward, keeps us from continuously reiterating the same thoughts over and over again and it’s not always easy.”

Before the council meeting, Covey said he asked himself how he lost control of the previous meeting. He said he felt the same thing was happening when council was discussing a sewer connection issue when they had no information.

While discussing a citizen’s request to connect to the city sewer system, the mayor expressed his frustration to staff about why they allowed the item to go on the agenda without any information available for the council to make an informed decision.

Gavinski said the item was allowed to go on the agenda without information because the request came in late, after the agenda was already prepared. There was a deadline approaching for the citizen to connect to the system that needed to be dealt with immediately.

“This issue, with regard to the sewer, it would have been so much easier had we had a cover letter explaining everything that had gone on and then we could have listened to the gentleman,” Covey said. “It would have eliminated a lot of misunderstanding.”

The mayor also explained how if he makes a judgement to end a discussion, the council can overrule his decision.

He said he felt he lost control of the council that night because he asked them for a motion before more discussion, but they continued talking anyway.

“I felt like it was necessary for me to take control and guide it back in a direction, some kind of positive goal to reach the end here,” Covey said. “You always have the right to overrule me. I certainly don’t feel that I intimidate anyone. I’m just like you. I’m just another councilmen sitting up here.”

He asked council to submit suggestions at next meeting about how he should run future meetings.

“I never try to be disrespectful of any of you,” he said. “We don’t always agree and that’s the way it should be.”

He reminded them the mayor position is elected by the council every two years.

“If you don’t like this one, you certainly got six other guys that could be up here,” Covey said.

“No, we love this one,” Liebrecht said.

Councilmember Dick Deane also shared comments about how the council should interact with each other with more courtesy and less directness.

He did not direct his comments at any certain person.