Dear editor:
Due diligence by the Hot Springs Board of Directors would have saved your taxpayers $223,000. I'm a former city councilor in Grants Pass, Ore. What I share with the people in Hot Springs is that I, too, live in a town that had to pay former City Manager David Frasher hundreds of thousands of dollars in severance after he "resigned." Frasher was hired in Grants Pass by the city council about three years before I was elected. Incredibly, they literally let him write his own contract.
Regardless, it's now official, former Grants Pass City Manager David Frasher "resigned" from his latest job in Hot Springs after a race-based confrontation with a neighbor. That's five city manager positions in a row he's left amid highly questionable circumstances -- Oak Grove, Mo., Ashland, Wis., Grants Pass, Ore., Oregon City, Ore., and now your town of Hot Springs.
After his last three jobs, Grants Pass (the newly elected city council I was on found him impossibly insubordinate), Oregon City (another race-based termination) and Hot Springs, Frasher has pocketed in severance or from suing the cities over, $848,000 in cash and benefits. That's $848,000 over and above all the salary and benefits he made while employed. Some people might call that white-collar crime. I wouldn't because the city councils in all these cities willingly entered into a contract with a guy who had a horrendous track record, foolishly thinking that the leopard would change his spots.
After speaking with city officials in three cities, I understand how it happened, but that's still no excuse.
With appropriate due diligence, he never would have been hired in Grants Pass or in Hot Springs. The handwriting was on the wall. Two stops before Grants Pass in Oak Grove, one city attorney, Clay Barton, stated in a nationally published article: "it's taken us the better part of 10 years to recover from David Frasher's destructive actions." Obviously, no one from Grants Pass talked to him before hiring Frasher.
When the Grants Pass police department sent a detective to Ashland, Wis., (Frasher's stop immediately before Grants Pass) to do a so-called background check on Frasher, he never consulted with Ashland Mayor Fred Schnook (Frasher's immediate supervisor), half the city council or Ashland Police Chief Dan Crawford.
Very long story made short, in order to represent the people's best interests, we ended up having to fire Frasher after he threatened in writing to sue us personally. We had no viable choice. He was our employee and made it clear he didn't want to work with/for us. Amazingly, a future Grants Pass council of Frasher sympathizers rewrote history and changed his firing into a "resignation," but still let him keep $186,000 in severance.
When former Ashland Mayor Schnook heard about the Frasher-centered firestorm in Grants Pass, he sent a letter published in our local newspaper stating: "Frasher's tenure in Ashland is remembered as a time when elected officials were accused of creating 'a hostile work environment' and threatened with lawsuits ... council meetings were tumultuous ... friends became pitted against each other." That sounded eerily similar to the scenario we experienced in Grants Pass.
That's Frasher's pattern, in five cities in a row Frasher's tenure has ended with chaos, hostilities and/or big dollar payouts. The writing was on the wall. It's too bad no one in Grants Pass or Hot Springs cared enough to read it. Being involved with Frasher has proved to be a very expensive lesson for the taxpayers.
Rob Pell
Grants Pass, Ore.
Editorial on 07/08/2018