Several top Boise officials, including those close to the former mayor, have left
In the past six months, Boise City Hall has lost key leaders in several departments as people left — sometimes to new jobs or retirement, but sometimes, it appears, to no new job at all.
Since February, a month after Mayor Lauren McLean took office, at least six officials in the mayor’s office and across city departments have left their jobs. Several of those people were close to former Mayor David Bieter, the 16-year incumbent whom McLean beat in a runoff election in December.
The departures include:
▪ Adam Park, the former director of the city’s Office of Community Engagement, who left his job in February, according to his LinkedIn page. His social media profiles do not list a new job. He made about $113,000 annually as of May 2019.
▪ Wyatt Schroeder, Boise’s former director of community partnerships, who left in March for a new job with a consulting firm. He made about $85,000 annually as of May 2019.
▪ Dennis Doan, Boise’s former fire chief, who left in March after retiring — although if he had not retired, the Boise City Council was considering firing him. He appears to own a consulting firm now, according to his social media profiles, though the business does not appear in searches of the Idaho Secretary of State’s business records. Doan was the city’s second-highest-paid employee after Bieter gave him a raise in 2019, earning $165,000 a year.
▪ Jade Riley, the city’s former chief operating officer, who left in July to become the city administrator for Ketchum. As of May 2019, Riley made about $156,000 a year.
▪ Daren Fluke, the city’s deputy director for comprehensive planning, is resigning effective Friday, according to the Idaho Press. His resignation comes just a few months before the city begins the overhaul of its zoning code. It is not clear what he may do next. He made about $95,000 a year as of May 2019.
Those five employees were close to Bieter and even donated hundreds of dollars to his re-election campaign last year (with the exception of Park, who gave nothing but whose wife gave $1,000.)
The sixth is Karen Boe, the mayor’s spokesperson, who moved to Boise from Utah in early March. She announced her resignation to media via automated email response last week, about five months after she started. Her resignation, too, is effective Friday.
It’s normal for a few people to leave when administrations switch over in a government. But it’s less standard for people brought on as part of the new administration to leave just a few months into the job.
“I am moving on to diverse communications and public relations work regionally,” Boe’s response said.
Boe and Park did not respond to phone calls from a Statesman reporter on Wednesday. Doan did not respond to an email request for comment. Schroeder, Riley and Fluke could not be reached for comment.
It is unknown exactly how many people have resigned or otherwise left from their roles in the past several months. The city denied a Statesman public records request asking for letters of resignation from officials in the mayor’s office since McLean took office Jan. 7, citing Idaho’s public records act that exempts “all personnel records of a current or former public official” other than their employment and pay histories.
When asked why those employees had left, Lana Graybeal, spokesperson for the mayor’s office, said she could not comment on personnel matters. She declined to say whether anyone had been asked to resign. She said the fact that employees were part of Bieter’s administration was “not a consideration.”
“This is a personnel issue,” she told the Statesman. “We function as an organization, and people resign. I would say that’s a normal part of an organization.”
This story was originally published August 5, 2020 at 2:20 PM.
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