“Invisible Man” Heley filed tort claim against City in February

Phil Heley, dubbed the "Invisible Man," has not been seen at a city meeting in 2009, despite a requirement by the City Council to do so.

A hostile relationship appears to be ongoing between Sewer Supervisor Phil Heley and the City of Lakeside he works for.

Claiming “emotional distress,” Phil Heley filed notice of a tort claim against the City of Lakeside and Council Member Rod Schilling last February, a copy of which was obtained this week by Lakesideinfo.com.

Hired to the position of supervisor, Heley was hand picked and urged for the job by Mayor Orville Nelson, despite the fact that Heley had never worked in a sewer plant before and lacked the DEQ credentials, a Class III certification (nor any lesser qualification) to run a plant.

Nelson, with the help of then, city attorney Rich Rodeman, rewrote the qualifications of what is required to run the plant by eliminating the requirement of a DEQ certification, but promising at a council meeting in April 2007 that Heley would become qualified within a year.

Mayor Nelson even went so far as to say “Heley would sign a contract.”

The latter has never happened, although we understand Heley went to Salem to attend a class towards certification within the last few months (We are investigating costs and benefits to the city).

In a column by Council member Rod Schilling in February, titled “Something Stinks at the Sewer Plant,” he questioned the city having an unqualified (by DEQ standards) supervisor over the two employees who each have a hard-to-earn Class II DEQ certification. That is  just one level below what DEQ requires of at least one person overseeing Lakeside’s sewer plant.

South sewer plant

In the Tort Claim, obtained from Lakeside City Hall and stamped by the city as having been received on February 27, 2009,  Heley states the following:

“To: City of Lakeside, City Council of Lakeside, Rod Schilling (City Council Member) and Rod Schilling (personally):

“Per ORS 30.275, I am giving you notice of my claim for damages against See each entity and person listed above. My name and mailing address are listed above, and any correspondence may be sent to my attention at the above address. The time, place, and circumstances giving rise to my claim, so far as are known to me, are as follows:

“On the evening of Monday, February 2, 2009, my wife was on the computer looking at the Lakesideinfo.com website. She called me into the room to read the latest information on the sewer plant. It was an article titled Guest Viewpoint by Rod Schilling, City Council member of Lakeside. As I read the information, I was upset by the intentional infliction and emotional distress created by the false statements that were published in Mr. Schilling’s article. The article stated that I could not legally do any of the simplest repairs to the step and steg systems. The city has been using an outside source to sign off since at least 2003. So, my employment did not put the city in a position of having to use an outside source. A copy of the publication by Mr. Schilling is attached and incorporated by reference.

“Very truly yours,  /s Phil Heley”

We asked Rod Schilling how he felt about receiving the tort notice.

He said: “My reaction was: Why were they coming after me, when it was about the law and not the person? I didn’t make the law.”

The qualifications and training to run a municipal sewer plant have a lot of similarities to becoming a plumber or electrician in terms of time and extensive training. The state Dept. of Environmental Quality oversees this procedure and qualifies individuals to run a plant.

A tort claim is a legally required form indicating the possibility of filing a claim in court.

Specifically, the ORS states the requirement here: “If the claim is against a local public body or an officer, employee or agent thereof, to the public body at its principal administrative office, to any member of the governing body of the public body, or to an attorney designated by the governing body as its general counsel.”

We attempted to ask both Phil Heley and Orville Nelson a number of questions on the case. Both have remained silent, to the point where Phil Heley has failed to follow a City Council directive to require all department heads to attend monthly city meetings and report on their respective department activities.

It should be noted that the previous Lakeside Sewer Superintendent had a required Class III certification and thus may have satisfied the DEQ requirement that the city have a Class III person working most of the time, although a serious injury limited Don Bignell to half time for the last few years of his employ.

Heley’s tort disputed by the law itself?

What would seem to contradict Heley’s tort claim statement, although not the emotional distress he may have felt, is what is said on an Oregon DEQ website:

“As required under ORS 448.415, a valid (initial or renewal) certificate is required for a person to operate (without supervision by properly certified operator) or supervise the operation of a sewage treatment works (domestic wastewater treatment and collection system). The operator’s certificate must correspond to the classification (type and grade level) of the system supervised.”

We wanted to ask Phil Heley a number of questions. Those include the following (for which we will be happy to cover his responses in a future article…even to provide space for an unedited response from him or his attorney):

• Phil, how are you coming in your study to become DEQ Certified?
• Was the tort used as an intimidation factor to get the newly elected council member from asking any appropriate questions under his obligation to Lakeside citizen’s to ensure that all employees act responsibly and efficiently?
• Do you feel any shame at being in the position of having been hired by a friend who created a job for you (even dumbed-down the criteria for you) so you could make $22 per hour from Lakeside ratepayers?
• It has been discovered that your accumulation of a massive amount of comp time hours is (or was on January 31st of this year, at least) about four times the amount allowed by Lakeside’s rules and double what state law allows, so:

1. Do you feel any responsibility as a supervisor working for the city to follow city personnel rules or even state law and curtail your own creation of a massive obligation to the city?
2. Who supervises your tracking of how much comp overtime hours you’ve amassed and, since you ignore comp time rules and laws, what assurance do Lakeside citizens have these are actual hours worked?
3. Would all these extra hours allegedly worked actually be necessary if you had extensive training?

• When do you anticipate becoming DEQ certified, when qualifications to become a Class III have already been shown to include multiple years as a journeyman first?

Lakesideinfo.com has placed a call into city hall asking for comment from both Mayor Nelson and Phil Heley. We were informed Heley is burning off some of that extra time and not available this week. Nelson has continued his stance of silence, but we have heard at a council meeting, exclaimed that something must be done to stop Lakesideinfo.com.