WEST JORDAN -- The City Council has approved financial settlements totaling $69,652 for two public works employees fired earlier this winter by City Manager Dan Dahlgren.
As part of the council's common consent agenda Tuesday night, the city authorized settlement payments of $34,652 to former public works director Greg Walkenhorst and $25,000 to former fleet manager Gordon Ryan.In accepting the negotiated settlements, both men signed legal documents formally releasing the city from all future claims of any kind.
Both settlements were only a formality, having been informally approved in previous executive sessions and already paid out to the former employees.
The settlement gave Walkenhorst, an at-will employee who was forced to resign his post Oct. 12, three months of severance pay and paid out a one-year retirement contribution needed to complete his 30-year public retirement portfolio.
For Ryan, who was fired Nov. 4 and had threatened a whistle-blower lawsuit against the city, the settlement gave him the equivalent of three months of severance pay plus $10,000 to settle any legal claims against West Jordan.
City Attorney Greg Curtis said the settlement with Ryan did not constitute an admission of any kind by the city regarding the former fleet manager's prospective claims.
After consulting with other legal advisers, Curtis said he had determined it would cost West Jordan far less in terms of time and money to settle any pending claims for $10,000 than it would to engage in litigation.
Walkenhorst was terminated about a month after he and Ryan visited the West Valley City offices in September to talk to a former West Jordan employee who recently left the city.
The city administration reportedly viewed that visit as a disloyal effort to dig up dirt on West Jordan officials and cause more turmoil in the strife-torn city where the administration, mayor and factions of the council have been deeply divided over the past two years.
Council members also were told in closed session the two had caused a serious confrontation that had upset the former employee and raised the ire of the West Valley city manager. Sources in West Valley City refuted those claims and indicated the city manager was not present in the building when the confrontation was alleged to have taken place.
Ryan had been at the center of controversy for the past 18 months, filing two grievances against former Assistant City Manager Penny Atkinson and raising questions about the spending of the city's fleet fund that led to a major furor in 1998.
He also was the subject of an exhaustive investigation earlier this year by West Jordan Police Lt. Randy Johnson, who was instructed by the City Council to determine whether Ryan had used city time and equipment to write novels after being forbidden to do so.
While the probe found substantial portions of manuscripts left as a "ghost" on the hard drive of Ryan's computer, it was inconclusive as to whether they had actually been written on the computer on city time. Ryan contended they had been written at home and showed up on his hard drive because he had imported the filed by e-mail from his home computer and opened them at work to look at them.
However, Johnson's report did conclude that Ryan's computer showed the fleet manager apparently had spent an unusually extensive amount of time on the Internet on non-city matters including his book dealings and personal correspondence.
Ryan also disputed those conclusions.
Walkenhorst, Ryan's supervisor, was directed to take disciplinary action and gave the fleet manager 10 days off without pay, the penalty for a first offense cited in West Jordan's policies and procedures manual.
When word trickled down to the public works department on Oct. 11 that Walkenhorst was being fired the next day, Ryan and two other supervisors called a meeting with other public works employees to discuss the termination and talk about a show of support for Walkenhorst at the Oct. 11 council meeting.
In a letter of termination from Dahlgren, Ryan was told the city manager had since determined the meeting was actually a "rally" that used a city building for a personal and non-work purpose. The letter also indicated discussions that took place at the meeting may have violated provisions of the city's policies and procedures manual.
After leaving the city, Walkenhorst accepted a position in November as vice president of operations for Treehouse Galleries in Alpine.
Ryan took a job last month as general manager of an unincorporated resort community of some 3,000 residents in Southern California.