After taking care of a few standard housekeeping items — approving the meeting calendar, appointing community members to various committees — the Umatilla City Council censured its mayor with little fanfare at a meeting this week.

The censure came amid accusations from City Manager David Stockdale that Mayor Caden Sipe had repeatedly undermined Stockdale’s authority throughout 2024. The council had been discussing the dispute behind closed doors during executive sessions meetings, but it spilled into the public’s view in December after Sipe requested they talk about the complaints at an open meeting.

Like most rural Oregon towns, Umatilla’s mayoral position mostly acts as a figurehead – the person does not have a vote in most situations and leaves day-to-day administration of the city to its manager. The council’s censure places further restrictions on Sipe, prohibiting him from representing the city at meetings unless authorized by the council or city manager, and requiring a third party present when he meets with Stockdale.

In an email sent after the meeting, Sipe said the council was trying to censor him in a “disturbing abuse of power.”

“I did not forfeit my First Amendment right to free speech when I was elected to public office,” he wrote. “Asking tough questions, promoting transparency, and advocating for accountability are not just my duties as mayor – they are what I promised voters when I ran for office, and they are also my right as a citizen.”

At the center of the conflict is Stockdale, who the council hired in 2018 after serving as the city administrator for the city of Prosser, Wash. During his tenure, he’s worked on tax incentive deals that brought Amazon data centers to the city and championed Project PATH, a shelter and warming station for unhoused residents in western Umatilla County.

In a resolution approved by the council, they affirmed the accusations Stockdale made last year, when he accused Sipe of repeatedly interfering with his duties by attempting to influence Stockdale’s analysis of a potential bond to pay for a new police station, openly criticizing the city manager for managing the Umatilla’s enterprise funds in “an immoral and unethical manner,” and holding side discussions with a competitor while Stockdale was negotiating with an internet provider.

At the December meeting, Stockdale said these conflicts were sometimes the result of Sipe mixing family and personal interests with his duties as mayor.

“If I’m sitting in meetings with partners, customers, potential clients … and the work that I’m doing is being undercut by discussions that are occurring, you’re setting me up for failure,” he told the council last month.

According to his campaign biography, Sipe grew up in Umatilla and returned to his hometown after a stint working in La Grande as an information technologies worker. Upon his return, he was hired to teach robotics by the Umatilla School District, where his mother, Heidi Sipe, serves as the superintendent. Heidi Sipe, a stalwart in Umatilla, was hired to teach in the district in 2000 before ascending to the top job in 2008 at the age of 30. Leading a low-income and majority Latino school system, Sipe has attracted a lot of attention to her community and frequently weighs in on statewide education issues.

Caden Sipe was new to city politics when he ran for mayor in 2022, but won convincingly as he ran on a platform of greater transparency and “better use of technology.”

Defending himself, Sipe said in December that the council was retaliating against him for having a contrasting viewpoint to the council and the city manager. Furthermore, he said, the conversations he had with people who had business with the city were mere coincidences.

“We all live in a small town,” Sipe said. “Are you honestly claiming that none of you have conversations about the weather, sports, life in general with anybody who has business with the city? It would be impossible to avoid.”

In his email, Sipe said the council didn’t allow him to bring his own legal counsel to Tuesday’s meeting and claimed he was being denied due process. He also threatened legal action, but declined to comment further when asked who in the city he would be suing.

Sipe also continues to enjoy the support of his family and some community members. At the Tuesday meeting, he read a letter into the record written by Cameron Sipe, his sister, who chastised the council for pursuing “petty allegations” over more pressing issues in the city.

Cameron Sipe ended her letter by yielding the rest of her time to former Umatilla Police Chief Darla Huxel, who retired in 2023 after she, several members of the police department and the city were sued for allegedly failing to respond to a sexual assault case. The lawsuit is still active, although a federal judge later removed Huxel from it. She did not speak at the city council meeting.

Caden Sipe otherwise stayed mum on the censure approved by the council at the meeting. When councilors were given a chance to comment at the end of the meeting, many of them took a chance to lower the temperature and look forward to the new year.

“We’re trying to do the best we can do with what we have, and we have to go with that,” Councilor Daren Dufloth, himself a former mayor, said. “It takes a lot of courage. I have a lot of admiration for these people up here, including the mayor.”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/01/09/umatilla-censures-mayor-exposing-internal-rifts/