Eagle Urban Renewal faced with term limit violations and confusion. What City Council did

The Eagle City Council voted 3-1 to reduce the number of urban renewal board members and shift term limits after stories of confusion and term limit violations came to light.

Council member Craig Kvamme, the former chair of the agency, was the only council member to vote Tuesday against the new ordinance. He agreed with all the changes except cutting the number of board members from nine to seven.

“I don’t see a compelling reason to lower the number,” Kvamme said.

The council originally sought to reduce the number of board members in a March 12 meeting — the day Eagle Mayor Brad Pike was set to make recommendations to fill two vacancies on the board.

The council’s decision to re-write the policy effectively shut the door on Pike’s recommendations until, during a brief special meeting on April 26, the council voted to remove two urban renewal members who had overstayed their term limits.

Pike will now be able to recommend members to fill the two vacancies, but said the two he’d originally considered in March were out of the picture.

The board members were Mac McOmber and Teri Ledoux, the chair of the board, whom the City Council appointed to fill a vacancy in February 2023.

Pike said in a phone call that he did not know how or why the two board members overstayed their terms, which expired eight months ago in August 2023, but that it could have been a misunderstanding about how long they were supposed to serve after filling a vacancy. For instance, if someone with a four-year term left the board halfway through, their replacement would serve the remaining two years, he said.

“We need to make sure that they’re all up to date and consistent and everyone knows when their terms end,” Pike said.

The city plans to look into other committees to ensure members are following term limits, he said.

The new ordinance makes several edits to the urban renewal agency, including:

• Dropping the number of board members from nine to seven.

• Changing the term limit for the first seat, which the mayor or a City Council member fills, to a one-year term.

• Requiring those who want to serve a second consecutive term to apply again before the City Council considers them.

• Barring members from staying on the board if they have served two consecutive three-year terms or three consecutive two-year terms.

• Editing terms so that appointed at-large commissioners would fill the second, third and fourth seats for two-year terms, while seats five through seven would serve three-year terms.

Eagle Urban Renewal Agency: a bloated board?

The decision on Tuesday ended — for now — a two-month saga after Council Member Helen Russell brought the issue forward in March “after taking a look at the history of our urban renewal commission,” she said then.

Former Mayor Jason Pierce signed an ordinance in 2020 to raise the number of members from seven to nine to help create a separation of power between the city and the urban renewal agency, as nearly half the seats were filled by City Council members.

But, along with overstaying term limits, Russell said in March that the board was too big and not acting in a timely manner, which had caused confusion and miscommunication.

As in the Tuesday meeting, council member Kvamme was the only no vote during the March meeting to have city staff members re-write the ordinance.

Kvamme said having more renewal agency board members helped tamp down the agency’s high turnover and absenteeism and gave the agency a bigger base of knowledge.

“Having a good broad base set of opinions … is valuable in terms of making better decisions,” Kvamme said then. “I think it’s important to have a core group of seasoned or veteran people on the urban renewal agency for depth.”

Council Member Mary May disagreed, saying the board would be able to maintain institutional knowledge by having staggered terms.

“I really see no downside to constraining it to seven like it was before,” May said then. “I think you can manage quite well with seven.”

Sparks flew during that meeting, with Pike and council members arguing over each other and firing off testy responses.

Pike said that people had believed his recommendations had been politically motivated, which he vehemently denied. He said he didn’t know the political affiliations of his proposed appointees and that the regular process had been followed “to a T.”

“I took great offense to the fact that I was somehow made the scapegoat,” Pike said then. “This is the first time that I’ve seen that even brought up as a consideration. So I’m very disgusted with that.”

The tensions got to the point in March that during public comment a community member praised the female council members, who all voted to lower the number of urban renewal members, for standing up to a “scary” Pike.

“I understand Mr. Pike that you were very frustrated but you really came across very full of rage, very angry and defensive and it seemed very unprofessional,” said Hilda Garcia. “It literally felt like you were barking at them.”

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