After 108 days in the position, Lauren Reichelt is no longer the Española city manager.
The city council voted to terminate her employment during a special meeting on Thursday in a 5-3 vote, after discussing their concerns about her performance for more than 100 minutes.
The concerns ranged from her posts on social media to her willingness to follow council direction.
In a telephone interview, Reichelt called her time with the city “worthwhile.”
“Española has a really good staff and it’s a shame that the politics in the town are so dysfunctional, it really holds the staff back from doing what they could do,” Reichelt said.
She requested discussion about her evaluation at the Jan. 8 special meeting to occur in public, which caused multiple councilors to express concern about whether it would open the city to legal liability if other employees were mentioned.
“If you have concerns with me, please tell me what they are,” Reichelt said. “I actually am the city manager. It is my job to manage the staff here. So, if what you are talking about is that you want to go into executive session because you would like to micromanage the staff, I don’t think that’s OK.”
District 4 City Councilor and Mayor Pro Tem Justin Salazar-Torrez, who called for the special meeting, told Reichelt she was correct.
“With all due respect, since this is now open to the public, yes you’re right,” he said. “If you think that the governing body is micromanaging the staff, therefore, I will turn that and say, ma’am, you have micromanaged staff in the sense of not empowering our directors to therefore oversee the people under them, which is not fair. And that’s as far as I’m gonna go into discussion because we, I’m, not gonna speak about certain employees.”
Controversy surrounding Reichelt’s tenure at the city ramped up in December, after Assistant Fire Chief John Wickersham presented a three-page policy and procedure document for the department’s Post Opioid Recovery Team (PORT) at two committee meetings and the city council meeting on Dec. 9.
Just before the city’s winter closure, Reichelt issued Wickersham a notice of contemplated disciplinary action stating his actions and a related follow-up email exchange were insubordinate, he broke the chain of command, committed harassment and created an appearance of a rolling quorum of the city council because he included council members in the email.
Community and councilor frustrations grew after emails and other city documents regarding the situation were posted on Facebook by an anonymous user and Wickersham, himself. The International Association of Fire Fighters Local #4339 also posted a letter of support for Wickersham on their Facebook page.
Appointment
Mayor John Ramon Vigil appointed Reichelt to the city manager position in September, after the council rejected his appointment of City Clerk Carla Martinez. At the time of her appointment, the city had been without a manager for more than three months.
Former city manager Eric Lujan left in May, after the city council approved a settlement agreement allowing him to stay on as a temporary special projects coordinator through September, while receiving his city manager salary.
Reichelt’s career in the Española Valley started in the early 1990s, when she began volunteering with Rio Arriba County to fundraise for a public playground. She eventually became the director of the county’s then-newly created Health and Human Services Department. After 22 years in the position, she went on to work as the Environmental Health Division director for the New Mexico Environment Department before retiring in 2022.
The city manager position is one of four that must be approved by a municipality’s governing body in the state of New Mexico. The others include the fire department chief, police department chief and the city clerk.
At the time of Reichelt’s nomination, District 4 City Councilor Samuel LeDoux was the sole person to vote against her appointment. He cited her political posts on Facebook regarding her critical views of federal law enforcement as the reason.
Termination
LeDoux, along with District 1 City Councilor Aaron Salazar, District 2 Councilor Peggy Sue Martinez, District 3 Councilor Denise Benavidez and Salazar-Torrez voted to terminate Reichelt’s employment.
LeDoux again cited Reichelt’s posting on social media, as well as her request to discuss her job performance publicly, as reasons for his decision.
She put the council in an uncomfortable position and requested discussions involving other employees be left for the executive session part of the meeting, he said.
“I’m sorry, but you have made this choice and combined with some of the other choices that she’s made throughout the course of her term, she is a shoot from the hip kind of manager, where we’re seeing, where we’re receiving, decisions made quickly and without careful thought,” LeDoux said.
He cited posts by Reichelt on Facebook where she posted addresses and photos of nuisance properties, identified by the code enforcement team.
Reichelt mistakenly said these properties were part of the city’s official Clean and Lien Program, though they were not.
In response, Reichelt said it was a mistake and the information she posted was already part of the public record.
Benavidez said that at the time of Reichelt’s appointment, the city needed a “body” until the upcoming election in March 2026.
“I don’t think anybody’s gonna deny that, but we needed somebody here to run the city until the next election,” she said. “That’s another truth, right? And we needed a body, we found a body, we know she didn’t have all the experience.”
Benavidez also allegedly heard Reichelt speak about the city negatively at a meeting.
Reichelt responded that she does speak about the significant number of challenges Española faces, and the $12.5 million budget they have to deal with those issues.
“I do talk about that in public sometimes because it takes tremendous creativity to try and figure out how to solve these problems,” she said.
District 1 Councilor Pedro Valdez, District 2 Councilor Nanette Rodriguez and District 3 Councilor Felicia Archuleta-Toya voted to keep Reichelt on as city manager.
Rodriguez was the only councilor to speak directly about anything related to the situation with Wickersham and referred to the letter from the fire union.
“I personally want to say that I believe that the governing body was elected to make policy and not be involved in personnel issues,” she said.
Rodriguez said that Reichelt was doing a good job.
“We’ve had projects that have moved forward,” she said. “We are seeing things being completed that we have not seen in the four years that I’ve been serving on this council.”
Wickersham
In December, Wickersham attended the Public Safety Committee, Finance Committee and city council meetings.
The city council approved hiring two care navigators, and Wickersham wanted one of the positions to be housed within the fire department for PORT. The Public Safety Committee approved his plan and the Finance Committee tabled the discussion.
A vote on the policy and procedure appeared on the city council agenda for Dec. 9, but the council made the motion to simultaneously pass the policy and procedure and approve the placement of one care navigator within the fire department.
About two weeks after the council meeting, Wickersham exchanged emails with Reichelt about hiring of the two positions.
“As we approach the new year, I strongly hope that we can move past repeated delays and prioritize filling this position without additional excuse,” Wickersham wrote. “Timely action is essential to stabilize operations and support both staff and the community we serve.”
Reichelt responded by saying she believed him and other members of the fire department had “no idea whatsoever what is involved” in running a social services program.
In a telephone interview, Reichelt said this was evident by the policy and procedure Wickersham presented at the meetings.
A three-page policy was not sufficient, she said, and programs like these often have policy and procedure manuals more than 40 pages long.