Oronoco City Council fires city administrator in 3-2 vote, Council Member Bergner resigns

(ABC 6 News) – An unexpected change occurred with the city of Oronoco earlier this week.

During Tuesday night’s council meeting, council members Jim Phillips and Jim Richards put forth a motion to fire city administrator Sunny Bjorklund Schultz based off a performance review the two members conducted on her.

The council voted 3-2 in favor of firing her from this position. Council member Dana Bergner, who was one of the two votes against the firing of administrator Bjorklund Schultz, resigned from her position on Wednesday

Both Bergner and Eichhorst were completely unaware of Phillips and Richards proposal to fire administrator Schultz at Tuesday night’s meeting. Bergner said the lack of notice lead her to resign from her post.

Oronoco’s city council meeting appeared to be as normal as any on it’s agenda Tuesday night. Until councilmember Jim Richards made a proposition for a closed session to discuss a personnel committee review on city administrator Bjorklund Schultz.

Schultz, became Oronoco’s first ever city administrator in June of 2022. She was brought on to help the city’s waste water project among other duties.

Oronoco’s city council meeting appeared to be as normal as any on it’s agenda Tuesday night. That was until councilmember Jim Richards made a proposition for a closed session to discuss a personnel committee review on city administrator Sunny Bjorklund Schultz.

Schultz, became Oronoco’s first ever city administrator in June of 2022. She was brought on to help the city’s waste water project among other duties.

While Richards and Phillips personnel committee review of Schultz found her performance in the job to be “unsatisfactory.” Oronoco Mayor Eichhorst and fellow councilmember Bergner found it to be the opposite.

“One major issue of the review, it was very, in my opinion, it was lacking any details of incidents, occurrences,  of things happening,” said Eichhorst. “My overall review is that she’s been very pleasant on the phone with residents with some who are upset about things.”

Former councilmember Bergner agrees, as she says the role had no baseline to work with.

“It was kind of a making the plane as you fly it situation and, with all of the projects that we have going on, and very little staff I think she did a good job,” Bergner said.

Council members Phillips and Richards declined to come on camera to disclose their reasons behind this push, as they claimed they could not speak on it now legally.

However, during Tuesday night’s meeting, they said they pushed for this firing due to administrator Schultz being absent from city hall often and needing consistent hours for her to be at city hall for residents, among other reasons. They both claimed in the meeting the large number of complaints from residents was enough to warrant her firing.

Where the city goes from here to find both a new administrator and councilmember will take some time, according to Mayor Eichhorst.

“We’ve gone through replacing councilmembers before. Rest assured, I think everything is still working. We have a deputy city clerk who’s been here for several years. So she’ll help pick up some of the work load,” he said.

Bergner wants the people of oronoco to know that even though she resigned, she feels she can continue to serve the community better as a private citizen.

“As soon as the vote was cast I knew that was what I needed to do. I definitely feel like for the last 10 months at least, that my vote hasn’t mattered. I will continue to serve Oronoco, always. And I’ll be paying attention, I’ll be going to meetings,” said Bergner.

The council and the mayor will be making a decision on what to do with their vacant council seat during next months meeting.