Corcoran focuses on budget after firing

Corcoran is scrambling to complete a city budget and perhaps line up a temporary city administrator after the City Council abruptly voted last week to fire longtime Administrator Sue Vergin.

During a routine list of annual appointments, Council Member Chris Hudok made a motion to keep all city staff -- except Vergin.

The council met in a closed session, after which council members voted 3 to 2 in favor of terminating Vergin's contract.

Council Member Paul Jacobs was one of those who voted to oust Vergin. In an e-mail, he said the majority believed Vergin "did not perform up to the Council's and residents' expectations."

"Having lived in this city since 1982," he wrote, "I believe I can generalize by saying that our administrator seemed philosophically to be out of sync with many longtime residents in this town."

Now, the remaining staff members in this mostly rural city of 6,000 residents are trying to fashion a city budget based on an overall figure the council recently set. The council had voted to keep the 2008 budget to a 3 percent increase over its 2007 budget, but had not detailed how it would do so, said Mayor Ken Guenthner.

"That's what Sue was working on before she was terminated," said Guenthner, who voted against firing Vergin. "The software package we do our receipts and disbursements on won't function until after we set that detailed budget. So the bills are piling up."

He declined to comment on what happened in the closed-door session but attributed the majority's decision on Vergin to those budget discussions, as well as to a general "house-cleaning" of city staff that the new council majority began this time last year.

The city has contacted the League of Minnesota Cities about possibly lining up an interim city administrator, but no decisions have been made, Guenthner said.

"It was quite the surprise," said Barb Larson, the city's clerk and treasurer.