Editor,

Pride plays a major role in whether or not the citizens of Oak Harbor can publicly fess up to making a mistake.

But how much money are the citizens of Oak Harbor willing to spend until they realize they cannot recover from debt and still maintain their pride?

At the rate Mayor Scott Dudley is going, City of Oak Harbor will be bankrupt before the next election.

I understand that, when you take over as the mayor, you may want to tend to be ruthless and fire anyone who stands in your way.

Is that really the right approach? So, to run a city like a dictator may sometime appear to a valid approach, but ultimately failure prevails.

Look at the facts below:

Mayor Dudley has fired five key employees. To fire these employees, City of Oak Harbor will pay a minimum of $550,000 in severance.

An interim attorney had to be hired at a rate of one-and-a-half times the amount of what the city was paying for their own attorney.

The city has multiple pending lawsuits, all during Scott Dudley’s first term in office.

The mayor has now fired a volunteer for the marina committee. The reason for this firing is because the mayor did not get his way on a previous vote.

It is nearly impossible these days to get someone to volunteer for a cause that does not pay.

Volunteering consumes many hours a month and has absolutely no medical or dental benefits.

Yet, City of Oak Harbor has a mayor who is firing a volunteer without due cause.

The mayor stepped up to the plate and is giving back 20 percent of his pay.

Of the remainder of his term, at 20 percent, he will give back approximately $27,200.

When the dust settles after his term, Scott Dudley will have put the citizens of Oak Harbor in debt an additional $9,522,800, not including unspecified damages if all pending lawsuits end in failure plus the 50 percent increase in attorney’s fees.

Does anyone realize that Mayor Scott Dudley is only at 33 percent of his term? How can anyone possibly recover from this type of debt?

Now the mayor wants to cut salaries and medical/dental benefits of other employees?

How can that type of reduction even come close to solving the financial problems that the mayor himself has created? Imagine the mayor standing there with a Dixie cup in his hand trying to bail out the Titanic as it was sinking.

Yes, he is trying, but the energy is totally wasted.

The preliminary conversion of Pioneer Way to a one-way street was under way prior to Dudley being elected.

Scott Dudley was opposed to the pioneer way project.

Prior to construction, it looked like a run down ghost town with vacancy signs on every other building.

There were challenges faced through the course of construction. Some challenges were inevitable.

When you drive down the completed project, you will now see that there is now more than 90 percent occupancy in the commercial buildings.

The vision of the council and previous mayor was a success.

Pioneer Way is thriving again. In the 30 years I lived here, I have never seen the historic district of Oak Harbor look so beautiful and doing so well.

City of Oak Harbor is now on its way to bankruptcy before the next mayoral election, however.

I think that it is time that the citizens of Oak Harbor reconsider their choice of mayor before they hit Chapter 7.

To remove a mayor may have its challenges, but it’s time for the voters and citizens of Oak Harbor to protect their city from ultimate failure.

Scott Hampton
Coupeville