Everybody coaches Raymond

Clockwise from top left: Wah-Sing, RL3, Van Hare, Satrom, Lassen, Delumpa.

As readers here know, Portland's new city manager, Raymond C. Lee III, left his previous job in the same capacity in Greeley, Colorado, under unexplained circumstances. Everyone there is sworn to secrecy.  Three other city officials, who answered to Lee, left Greeley City Hall at the same time. Lee has suggested that he quit because a new mayor and a couple of new city council members were elected, but Greeley residents tell us that that's unlikely.

Instead, the persistent rumor is that Lee was asked to resign because he was spending city money too lavishly. One commenter on this blog suggested that I look into retreats that Lee organized for members of his staff. Another complained about Lee's automobile expense account and paid leave allowance.

Determined to learn more, I put in a public records request with Greeley City Hall for records relating to any retreats by the city manager's office. This would by no means establish conclusively why Lee left Greeley, but I thought it might be revealing, and could lead to further, more targeted record requests. The city charged me $517.54 for a batch of documents; a generous reader picked up about $388 of that.

The documents, although not everything one might wish to see, do show a lot about Lee. Over the three-year period 2023 to 2025, he took his staff of seven people on at least three different overnight retreats – one in Boulder, about an hour away, and two in Denver, an hour and a half away. And during that time, he and his team hired at least four, and maybe five, different executive coaches to try to teach Lee and his staff how to lead a city of 108,000 residents.

Was this what led to Lee's departure from Colorado? We'll never know. But it might have been, especially if it was part of a larger spending pattern that ticked off the mayor and council over there. 

And regardless of what happened in Greeley, this trove of documents should have Portlanders' red lights flashing and sirens blaring. Lee is another one of those executive coach disciples, like so many others who have unpacked their carpetbags in local government here. (Remember the Portland Development Commission coach story?) Unless somebody puts their foot down, RL3 seems likely to spend tens of thousands a year, maybe even hundreds of thousands, getting himself and his minions coached.

Anyway, here's what I've been able to glean from the documents that Greeley produced in response to my request. 

2023

In April 2023, Lee and six other members of his city manager’s office “cabinet” held a “five star retreat.” The first part was held at Greeley City Hall on a Thursday afternoon. The group then immediately drove an hour or so to Boulder, where they checked in to the Hyatt Place Hotel and had dinner at a steakhouse, Salt. The next morning, they drove to the historic Chautauqua site for what was originally supposed to be a full day with executive coach Barb Van Hare, whose company, Kinetic Clarity, is based in Denver. Attendees were immersed in Van Hare’s “Emergenetics” and “outward mindset” teachings. Apparently Van Hare had to leave earlier than first planned, and so the agenda seems to have petered out at lunchtime on Friday. Before the retreat, however, she apparently met with the attendees one-on-one. A bid document shows her charging the city a $12,000 fee for her time.

Around this time, the city was also involved with another coach type from Denver, Meghan Satrom. One email message reveals that Satrom, whose specialty is marketing and public relations, was aware of the upcoming “five star retreat,” although neither she nor her email correspondent were invited.

“Retreating” to Boulder was apparently a regular thing for Greeley city bureaucrats. In December of 2023, a city council member, John Hall (who’s now the mayor), and six other bureaucrats adjourned to the Boulderado hotel for an overnight stay to discuss “connected vehicles,” those public safety vehicles that can change traffic signals on the fly. This group included Paul Trombino, a public works guy, later promoted to “managing director,” who left the city’s employ when Lee did. Trombino hadn’t been invited to Lee and Van Hare’s “five star” shindig.

2024

The city manager crowd drove an hour and a half to the Rally Hotel in Denver for a two-day retreat on December 5 and 6. For this event, it appears that Van Hare brought in as a subcontractor another executive coach, Marty Lassen, whose consulting company, in Denver, is called Complete Edge. Her spiel was a program called “Dare to Lead.” 

One attendee’s notes from this retreat show up in the packet, and they are more than mildly interesting. In her notes to the “Dare to Lead” session, we find:

Dare to Lead Cultural Challenge

Perception of CMO [City Manager’s Office]

1. Over spent

2. Highly paid – not productive

3. Out of touch

4. Optics

Bingo! There’s a clue if there ever was one.

One employee's parking came to $90.

2025

In 2025, the coaching and retreating for Lee & Co. ramped up even further. Van Hare was apparently up for hire to facilitate four quarterly retreats for the city manager’s office staff. The first three would be between half a day and a full day each; the fourth would be and day and a half to two full days. She was to invoice, and be paid, $11,000 a day, for an estimated total of $55,000.

The purchase order documents do provide some lighter moments. On December 19, 2024, Van Hare wrote:

The City of Greeley is embracing an exciting vision and exponential growth under the leadership of Raymond Lee as City Manager. To meet these bold and inspiring goals, the CMO must together with trust, transparency, and alignment to create and encourage collaboration, communication, and change. The CMO needs support and structure to continue the work they started during the CMO retreat in December 2025 [apparently she means 2024]. Coaching and facilitation in 2025 will occur on a quarterly basis to maintain focus, momentum, and resolution of key team priorities. This engagement will also harmonize with existing support structures such as City of Greeley Vision and Values, leadership competencies, and development tools like Emergenetics®.

It's not clear whether Van Hare got the gig, or how many, if any, of the four events with her went off as planned. Lee was officially gone by early November, and probably unofficially gone quite a bit before that, and so I doubt there was time for a fourth quarter meeting.

But the third quarter sure was interesting. In August, seven members of the city manager team drove an hour and a half to Denver for two full days of coaching. And this time, Van Hare was out, and two new coaches were in. One was a guy named Charles Sue Wah-Sing out of Ontario, Canada, and the other was a Portland fellow(!) named Cai Delumpa. These two are big on something called the “Enneagram” school of leadership.

The group stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn, checking in on Wednesday evening, and the event apparently went on through Friday. I believe that was Lee’s last staff retreat in Greeley.

* * * * * * * * * *

That's all I've been able to turn up so far. I wouldn't call any of it a bombshell, but it does tell us quite a bit about what to expect from Lee. 

I'm thinking about taking another run at documents from Greeley, but first I'm trying to get a read on how much it will cost to get records about Lee from Portland City Hall. They will surely make it difficult. They always do.