UPDATE. 6 p.m.: The Creswell City Council on Tuesday will move forward to negotiate an employment agreement with its newly appointed city manager, Vincent Martorello. The council met in executive session at 5 p.m. At 6 p.m., the council reconvened in public, and Mayor Nick Smith motioned to reconsider Martorello’s appointment. One of the four candidates who voted for Martorello would have needed to change their stance for the council to reconsider. Smith’s motion was not seconded.
CRESWELL – After the Creswell City Council appointed its new city manager last week, details from the appointee’s past soon emerged, prompting the council to pause and schedule a private meeting on Tuesday, May 20, at 5 p.m. to discuss how to proceed with Vincent Martorello.
Martorello was appointed the new city manager in a 4-3 vote after a seven-hour executive session on May 13. The council’s divided stance was apparent when they reconvened; no discussion took place, and they quickly moved to address the matter.
Council President Alonzo Costilla proposed Martorello’s appointment, which was supported by councilors Joan Morris, Clark Kent, and Mark Kremer. “The motion passes, but not unanimously,” said Mayor Nick Smith before concluding the meeting with a gavel slam.
Smith and interim city manager Spencer Nebel were expected to negotiate an employment agreement with Martorello in the coming days.
However, concerns arose as previously published information surfaced detailing Martorello’s resignation from Willamalane Park & Recreation District and Martorello’s involvement in a free press lawsuit at Oregon State University.
Nebel said the council was unaware of those issues before making the appointment. Martorello said he has nothing to hide.
“It didn’t come up during the interview process. The interim manager and I looked back after this all came about, and we really can’t recall if it did or did not come up specifically during the initial interview process,” Martorello said. “In other applications, there was a specific question about anything in my past, or any lawsuits. It was disclosed to that process, either on the application itself or during the initial interview. The Creswell process was different – it was a different conversation … the process is really good, and it just may have been something that was not thought necessary to ask, or the context of the conversation just never got there.”
The council needs at least four votes to determine its next direction.
“This is a special meeting just to review this additional information and to have the council confirm their comfort level in proceeding with the job offer,” Nebel said. “It’s really going to be up to the council to determine how they want to proceed.”
“I’m relying on the fact that … once they get the other side of the story, as it were, it will address many of the concerns,” Martorello said. “I have not purposely hidden anything.”
Costilla did not respond to a request for comment, and Smith declined to comment.
The resignation
According to a 2018 article in The Register-Guard, Martorello took over as Willamalane superintendent when Bob Keefer retired in 2016. Two years later, he resigned after disclosing a romantic relationship with a subordinate employee.
“The employee in question is my wife of five years,” Martorello said. “We got pulled into that (media coverage), but things have worked out great… Ultimately, I fell in love. I disclosed the relationship. We put things in place to protect all employees. It was an amicable separation. I’ve even used one of the board members as a reference in recent applications.”
The board of directors accepted his resignation and appointed his deputy, Michael Wargo, as acting superintendent, who still serves in that role today, now under the title of executive director.
Willamalane also implemented a policy addressing personal relationships in the workplace, as no such rule existed at the time. Kenny Weigandt, community engagement director, noted that this policy was just routinely updated at this month’s Willamalane board meeting.
The Chronicle filed a public records request with Willamalane to obtain past documents and materials relating to his departure and will update this article when those findings are made available.
The lawsuit
Court records detail that the Oregon State University Student Alliance faced a legal struggle in 2008 regarding its conservative, independent, student-led newspaper, The Liberty, after the University’s Facilities Department, headed by Martorello at the time, confiscated its news bins. Martorello was one of four administrators named in the lawsuit.
“I did not know the bins were removed until after the fact. I never gave any direction. One of the managers noticed that these bins were being chained to the railing for ADA ramps … impeding pedestrian flow,” he said. “It was not a function of any political ideology that I might have, or me squashing free speech. It was purely from an operating standpoint.”
According to court documents, the bins were removed from campus over winter break and placed in a storage yard. Students came back to find their bins missing. They called the police, eventually leading them to Martorello, who stated it was policy to maintain campus cleanliness by regulating and removing “off-campus” publications. The group contended that The Liberty was student-run and should not be classified as off-campus.
“We met with the local campus representatives of the paper. We explained the issue, and we worked with them to identify locations where the bins could be placed back with the other newspapers on campus,” he said.
The lawsuit states that the administration denied the group permission to place the bins around the campus again and that university counsel said the policy was “unwritten.”
In September 2009, the OSU Student Alliance filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, alleging that the policy infringed upon students’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights – the rights to a free press and due process.
“Their parent organization filed a lawsuit that we were squashing free speech with a paper – that was just not the case,” he said. “We were asking them to not have those bins located in a place where they would interfere with campus operations.”
Before the case was heard, the university amended its policy to allow any group to place newspaper bins on campus, eliminating the distinction between on- and off-campus publications.
“We created what we called ‘hubs’ so it was easier for us to understand where they are and easier for the newspapers to manage, and we paid for any damage that happened as a result of us removing the bins,” Martorello said.
In February 2010, the court granted the defendants’ Motion to Dismiss, ruling that the case was moot due to the amended policy and that the individual defendants had not participated in confiscating the bins.
However, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals later reversed this decision, declaring that the policy violated constitutional rights and affirming that the individual defendants had caused harm to the OSU Student Alliance.
The case was settled in April 2014, with the university agreeing to pay $101,000 to the editor and his attorneys.
Council’s next steps
The appointment to city manager is still subject to “background and negotiation,” Nebel said.
After Tuesday night’s meeting, when the council is scheduled to discuss it in an executive session, the council will reconvene in public to either vote to proceed with Martorello’s appointment or reconsider the decision. In the latter case, they could revisit the other candidates or restart the city manager search altogether.
“If the council takes no action, then we’ll continue to work on negotiating an agreement, and so if they take action to reconsider their decision from last Tuesday, then that’ll lay out a different framework for how we’re going to proceed,” Nebel said.
Only one of the three remaining candidates received votes from the council in the last round. Monique DeSpain received votes from Smith, who motioned the candidate, along with councilors Staci Holt and Alan Dukes.
Nebel’s contract ends June 13. “If council ends up in an extended situation without a manager, they’re going to have to look at making arrangements for an interim manager between the time I leave and when they could reasonably hire a city manager,” Nebel said. “That’s a potential that the council also needs to consider.”
Martorello still resides in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and serves as the director of Council Bluffs Parks and Recreation. He said he is remaining positive.
“It’s kind of a dream come true for me to think of relocating to a small rural town where I can actually become a member of the city and community,” he said. “I’m staying positive. I had a good interview process, and I really loved the city.”
