Yale City Council considers next move after firing city manager

YALE — Two weeks after unanimously removing former city manager Lorrelei Natke after an Aug. 10 closed session, Mayor Brenda Krzak and the Yale City Council are set to discuss their next steps at the Aug. 24 regular meeting.

Following the firing, Krzak said the council was going to take time tp figure things out. Day-to-day operations have been handled by city staff including Clerk Ashley Aldea, who has been taking college classes in various arenas of government with the ultimate goal of seeking a city manager’s position in the future.

During Natke’s tenure, council members had become more and more disenfranchised with her, because of what they say was lack of communication and not getting important information until minutes before a meeting. 

The tipping point seemed to come two weeks ago at the same meeting Natke was fired.

Unknown to most of council, Natke personally delivered a permit to C. Roy’s Inc. The muilti-page document was filled with stipulations required to be fulfilled by the meat-processing plant before they could connect to the city’s sewer system. The issue with the longtime business became contentious, which rallied residents to support the popular Yale business.

A June meeting in Yale regarding the same issue drew about 250 people, many of whom voiced concern to council regarding how the Roy family was being treated by the city over the plant’s wastewater discharge system.

C. Roys, and many of those in attendance at the large gathering, thought a resolution was reached after the city approved a new permitting system. However, the permit application for Roy’s was 22 pages long and required engineers and attorneys to review the lengthy list of requirements.

The Roy family said they spent over $100,000 in attorney and engineering fees, on top of placing two large concrete tanks in the ground in an effort to help solve the discharge problem at the plant. 

“I don’t know how much longer we can go on like this. It’s almost like they (city) wants us to close. We’ve asked over and over to sit down and talk and it’s turned into attorneys and engineers and it feels like they want us to fail,” said owner Nancy Roy. 

At the Aug. 10 meeting, Natke told council that other businesses had been inspected and that Roy’s “was the only issue.”

An owner of C.J.’s restaurant disputed that claim, saying his business had not been inspected.

Natke was subsequently relieved of her duties with four months severance pay.