City manager candidate Scott McClure seeks top job | Politics

He said he wanted to “take a step up” and landed at Canby, Oregon.

According to an article in the Canby Current, McClure was terminated from his most recent position after only four months on the job. The Canby City Council voted to terminate him 5-1 in open session after a closed meeting in February. No reason was given for his abrupt dismissal.

Canby Mayor Brian Hodson told the Canby Herald, “If I or any of the city councilors or staff talked about this outside the executive session, something could get misconstrued and it could turn into a legal matter.”

Because McClure was fired without cause, he received six months of his salary ($150,000 annually) and six months of benefits — more than he made during his four months in the position. If he was terminated “for cause,” he would not be entitled to severance.

McClure told the Star-Herald it was “odd how it ended,” calling it a “permanent mystery for me.”

“I was meeting all those standards, I was doing a great job, council told me I was doing a great job,” he said of his time there.

He said he’d given them a performance review that Council had signed off on, and he was congratulated for his work there.

“A week later they have an executive session without informing me, they contacted me that night, telling me, ‘Yeah, you’re going to be terminated.’ I asked what was going on, can someone please tell me what’s happening — wouldn’t give me any contact, and the next week, I was terminated,” he said.