Staff photo by E.J. HarrisHermiston city councilor Lori Davis reads from her opening statement as her challenger Mark Gomolski looks on during the Hermiston Chamber of Commerce candidate forum Wednesday at BMCC in Hermiston.

Hermiston City Council candidate Mark Gomolski thinks there are too many unanimous votes at council meetings.

He used his opening statement during a candidate forum last Wednesday night to attack his opponent Lori Davis, saying she is part of a council where too many decisions seem to have been made before the meeting takes place.

“When has she voiced opposition to anything the city council wants?” Gomolski asked. He later added, “She is just there to go along.”

Davis didn’t directly address his criticism of her voting record, choosing instead to focus on her local roots (she grew up in Hermiston and raised a family there) and pointed to projects the city has completed in her time on the council since being elected in 2010.

“It is exciting to see these goals become a reality,” she said.

Gomolski, however, said he has been knocking on doors to campaign and no one seems to know who Davis is despite her two terms on the council. He said the public needs leadership from its councilors, “not just someone who shows up to meetings.”

He also accused the city council, including Davis, of already having their minds made up before meetings, and of making decisions “in executive sessions behind closed doors.”

According to state law, councils can meet in a private executive session to discuss certain sensitive matters, such as litigation filed against them, but “No executive session may be held for the purpose of taking any final action or making any final decision.”

Mayor David Drotzmann told the Hermiston Herald he was disappointed to hear Gomolski’s accusations and that he “absolutely disagrees” that the council is illegally making decisions outside of open meetings. He said if someone only shows up to a meeting once every six months then it might seem like a vote was “foreordained,” but big decisions have usually been discussed in depth at prior meetings and work sessions open to the public before the night they come up for a vote.

Both candidates were asked the same set of questions on Wednesday at the Blue Mountain Community College campus in Hermiston, ranging from what the city’s biggest challenge is to what the city’s role should be in hosting events.

Davis answered most questions by listing past projects the city has completed to improve livability, including the Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center, the downtown festival street and new trails around town. She said the city is working on a management plan for EOTEC now and will be looking next week at the results of a public survey about the venue. She said she would like to see the old Carnegie the library on Gladys Avenue turned into a museum, and supports the city’s goal of coming up with the funding to build and manage a recreation center with indoor pool.

She also touted the city’s financial stability and praised staff for working hard and “watching the bottom dollar.”

“Hermiston is in a good financial position and will remain that way,” she said.

Gomolski criticized some of the projects Davis listed, stating that the city should have had a plan in place for EOTEC a long time ago. He said the festival street was a “showboat” and the $1.5 million could have been better spent on updates to Main Street.

He said the city needs to do more to reach out to groups such as the Hispanic community and the disabled, and to repair its relationship with the chamber of commerce.

Hermiston’s biggest challenge, he said, was a lack of workforce in fields like electrical and plumbing work, which slows down development of housing and other projects. Gomolski is currently a member of the Hermiston School Board, and said the city needed to do what it could to encourage more students to go into the trades and to help the school district build new schools or expand them.

“I would like to see the schools better helped with bond issues,” he said.

He has lived in Hermiston for the past five years, and said he loves the city and believes he will provide leadership beyond showing up at meetings to vote on what the city manager wants.