Hayden Changes Ways After Lifeguard Case

More than anything, Dan Taylor wanted to be a lifeguard this summer.

The 19-year-old Hayden resident is home from college, and he’s been watching over tykes tossing sand for five seasons.

So he got hired at Honeysuckle Beach last month as head lifeguard. He hired the rest of the staff. He spent two weeks getting the grounds ready for the sunny season.

And then one night his mom came home from a City Council meeting.

“They’ve fired you,” she said.

Taylor’s mom is Nancy Taylor, a City Council member. Nepotism is against the law.

But history complicates matters.

Nancy Taylor used to work for the city on special projects, and she ran the beach in the summer. She was laid off last year.

Because his mom worked for the city, her son didn’t get hired at Honeysuckle Beach, even though he’d been head lifeguard there the year before and had worked there for three summers before that.

This year, his mom’s first on the City Council, Dan decided to try to get his old job back.

Nancy Taylor, knowing there could be conflict of interest problems, advised he first call the city administrator, Bob Croffoot, and City Attorney Mike Vrable.

Croffoot was thrilled. Vrable also said no problem, as long as mom doesn’t vote on lifeguards. Dan was hired.

But on May 17 at a council workshop, Taylor brought it up again, just to be 100 percent sure that her son was in the clear.

Mayor Ron McIntyre suggested getting a second opinion.

Jerry Mason, a Post Falls city attorney who specializes in conflict of interest cases, disagreed with Vrable’s call. So did the state attorney general’s office.

At last Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Nancy Taylor called out the mayor and two other council members for conflicts of interest. If she was going to be held to the standard, so was everyone else.

In truth, Taylor’s conflict is the only one that would clearly be illegal, Mason said. But public perception can be just as damaging.

Some members of the Hayden City Council expressed frustration with their lawyer on Tuesday for giving poor advice about the conflict. Under no circumstances would Dan Taylor have been legally allowed to work at Honeysuckle, and the council didn’t understand why Vrable would have OK’d it.

Vrable’s seat was empty on Tuesday. Croffoot announced the attorney wants to quit next month. “I think he’s just tired,” the city administrator said.

Vrable declined to answer questions about the matter last week.

The city moved to solve its conflict of interest problems at this week’s meeting. Taylor’s son doesn’t work at the beach. McIntyre, who owns Super 1 Foods, has instructed the city staff to stop buying food from his store and to stop asking Martin to fix city typewriters.

Councilman Chris Beck, an engineer who did soil compaction tests for the city in January, refunded $202.50 to the city. Beck, an engineer for Frame and Smetana, vowed to do any similar work for the city pro bono or not at all.

Dan Taylor got three job offers the day after he was “unhired,” as he puts it, from the city. He’s now the beach manager at Q’Emiln Riverside Park in Post Falls.

In the fall, he plans to attend the University of Colorado to study nuclear physics.

If it wasn’t for his affinity for math and science, though, he might study politics. He’d even run in Hayden.

“I’d like to fix up politics,” he said.