Chelan’s New Mayor Has City Hall Jumpy Developer Was Once Barred After Incident With Officials

A developer once barred by court order from entering City Hall after he allegedly threatened city workers has been elected mayor.

With the counting of absentee ballots on Monday, Ron Sloan won by 64 votes over Joyce Stewart, a former city administrator who was elected mayor in 1991.

Sloan, 64, is a former Chelan High School teacher and coach who turned to real estate development and construction.

He is an owner of a development company that has struggled with city officials for the past six years to get approval for a subdivision. He insisted Monday that he ran for mayor because of his concerns about city spending, not development.

As mayor, Sloan will also have the authority to hire and fire city employees, and that’s causing some uneasiness among staff who have had past run-ins with Sloan over his development plans.

The biggest blowup occurred in February 1994, when Sloan was arrested for disorderly conduct.

According to court records, Sloan “verbally and physically threatened staff for the city of Chelan by shouting obscenities, throwing objects such as his car keys…”

Officer Ben Rhines, one of Sloan’s former students, wrote in his report that he heard Sloan shouting obscenities at city planner Larry Stockton and other city staff.

Sloan paid a $250 fine, wrote a letter of apology to the mayor and her staff and agreed to stay out of City Hall for a year as part of a plea agreement.

He satisfied those conditions in March and was allowed to withdraw his guilty plea and plead not guilty. The charge was then dismissed.

Sloan said he’ll withdraw from council meetings where he might have a conflict of interest. But he also said he planned to talk with Stockton about the planning staff’s demeanor in dealing with the public.