Bogart agrees to 1-year deal

The City Council, meeting in a special session Friday, approved a contract with Bogart, Mayor Dennis Dorrah said.

The city will pay Bogart $90,000.

Former manager Steve Brocato, whom the Council fired June 9, 2009, was making $96,816.

Bogart replaces Tim Collins, a former longtime city attorney who has worked as interim manager since last June.

Bogart’s contract does not include severance pay, Dorrah said.

The Council voted unanimously on Jan. 26 to hire Bogart.

He served as the city’s interim manager from October 2004 through November 2005.

A Baker County native, Bogart graduated from Baker High School in 1969.

Bogart was elected as chairman of that board in 1990 and 1994.

He did not run for re-election in 1998.

Bogart moved to Vale, where he worked as city manager, and he served in the same position in Madras from 2001 to 2004, when he returned to Baker City.

The City Council voted 4-2 on Dec. 18 to hire Tim Johnson of Portland as city manager.

But Johnson announced in late January that he could not take the job because he will be caring for a relative who is ill.

Dorrah said the Council did not discuss offering the job to Clarence Hulse of Florida, who was one of two finalists councilors picked in November.

Councilor Milo Pope termed Friday’s meeting “hunky dory.”

“Steve was hired. I like Steve Bogart. I want him to succeed,” Pope said. “I will not do anything to make his life miserable.”

However, Pope said the congeniality among councilors on Friday doesn’t mean all is well behind the scene.

“The truth was carefully concealed,” Pope said, referring to the pressure he believes Dorrah and some other councilors exerted to convince Collins to resign.

Pope said the biggest challenge facing Bogart will be resisting what he called the “gang of four” — meaning Dorrah and councilors Beverly Calder, Aletha Bonebrake and Clair Button, who voted for the motion to fire Brocato.

Pope, along with councilors Andrew Bryan and Sam Bass, voted against that motion.

All three councilors later endorsed the campaign to recall Calder and Dorrah from office as a result of their vote to fire Brocato.

City voters rejected that recall effort in a special election in October.

Bogart’s biggest challenge will be “resisting Dorrah and the other three trying to run the city as they have in the past,” Pope said.

Pope said he ran for election to the City Council in part because he thought the city was well run under Brocato and he wanted to be part of that.

But Pope said he believes things have gone downhill since then.

“I ran because I wanted to participate in what I thought was a darn good outfit, and these guys are screwing it up,” Pope said.