Lee leaving Greeley: "the regime change explanation is unlikely"

It's too late now for due diligence, but the conversation continues about why Raymond Lee, Portland's new city manager, left his old job as city manager in Greeley, Colorado. Yesterday the O reported that Lee suggested that he left because of a change in the elected leadership of Greeley city government:

Neither Greeley’s new mayor, his predecessor nor any member of its six-member council responded to questions from The Oregonian/OregonLive about Lee’s tenure and departure.

“The city of Greeley appreciates Raymond Lee’s vision and contributions to the community during his tenure as city manager,” city spokesperson Barb Hey said in an email Wednesday. “It was not unexpected that he would be moving on to serving a larger city, and we wish him well in his new position.”

Lee told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Wednesday that the decision for him and the city to part ways was mutual, providing him the chance to make his next career move while allowing Greeley leaders to make a smooth government transition.

“We agreed to manage that transition in a peaceful manner,” he said.

But an alert reader, apparently in Greeley, tells us this morning that that explanation is unlikely to be true. A comment left on one of my other posts on Lee says:

Thanks for your writeups. I want to give a little insight, I've seen a lot of people posting about how Lee's departure may have been about general regime change, and while I can't provide evidence of what happened, I think the regime change explanation is unlikely.

Greeley's new mayor, Dale Hall, was definitely the Council-endorsed candidate and protege of the former mayor. He's worked with Lee as a councilmember, so no real change there.

2 of the 7 council seats changed, one being vacated by Dale Hall (who is still on the council, just as mayor now instead of a councilmember). Of the two new council members, one is very business as usual, the other a BIT more of a question mark, but likely a lot like the current councilmembers. The candidates for the open seats who were the most different and openly more progressive did not win, and the elections weren't even particularly close.

At most, we have a bit of a shift in 1 of 7 council seats.

I say all this just to make the point that while I think it's typical that staffs change over when there's a change in regime, from my local vantage point, this particular election in Greeley was not much of a change at all, politically and in terms of where the councilmembers sat on most issues. Which makes me pretty suspicious that regime change is not the reason.

Is Lee giving misleading statements to the Portland newspaper, already? As much as I'd like to stop digging on this story, I guess I'm going to have to continue pursuing it for a while. If he's concealing something, maybe RL3 will come clean in the meantime.

UPDATE here.