Ignacio town trustees have fired Town Manager Lee San Miguel.

They took action at a special meeting on April 22 and named Police Chief Kirk Phillips as acting town manager. He has served in that position before.

The April 22 meeting was a follow-up to the regular April 15 meeting, when the agenda included an executive session to discuss the town manager's evaluation, with possible action to follow.

Mayor Stella Cox told the Times this week that after the executive session on April 22, "The board decided to release him without cause."

Trustees will discuss the town manager position at their regular meeting on May 6.

San Miguel started with the town in November 2013 after the resignation of Mike Lee. His relationship with town trustees has seemed on various occasions to be tenuous.

Trustees approved a $6,000 pay raise for him in February 2014 to cover his duties as town planner.

On July 2, 2014, trustees determined to create a list of performance improvements that they wanted from San Miguel. They also decided they wanted to hire a town planner. They voted not to a approve a $4,000 pay raise for San Miguel to continue planning duties, to decrease his pay by $6,000 once a planner was hired, and to advertise the planner position as soon as possible. Also that night, trustee Tom Atencio raised issues about the safety of some work on town gas lines.

On July 22, 2014, trustees debated whether they could discuss hiring a planner, since it wasn't on the meeting agenda. They had a closed session before the regular meeting to discuss the improvement plan and goals for San Miguel. Trustee Alison deKay said hiring a planner was "thoroughly discussed" there, and she considered direction to have been given.

Atencio said it was old business and should have been on the agenda. Trustees voted 5-1 to add it. They decided formal approval wasn't necessary to advertise the position using the same job description and qualifications as in 2012.

At the Aug. 6, 2014, meeting, Atencio objected to not being able to discuss things like the previously raised gas line safety concerns because San Miguel hadn't put it on the agenda. Town Clerk Georgann Valdez also complained about failure to put ongoing issues on the agenda. Atencio wanted to make a motion about this. Valdez said he couldn't, because it wasn't on the agenda.

Starting in January this year, trustees discussed town manager concerns and an issue of excessive staff overtime in a series of closed sessions during regular and special meetings.

At a special meeting on Jan. 26, trustees amended their agenda to allow for public comments related to the town manager. According to the minutes, several people spoke in San Miguel's favor, citing the amount of economic development in town and cooperative relations with the Southern Ute Indian Tribe during his tenure.

Trustees then went into closed session to discuss concerns with the town manager. Then they set a special meeting for Feb. 5 for town manager review in closed session.

According to minutes for the Feb. 5 meeting, the board set another closed session for Feb. 18 to conclude the town manager evaluation.

According to discussion at the March 18 meeting, trustees agreed by consensus during that Feb. 18 session to give San Miguel a 3-percent pay raise retroactive to Nov. 18, 2014, with a formal vote at the March 18 meeting. That was tabled until all trustees could be present.

The March 18 meeting also featured heated discussion between San Miguel and Town Treasurer and Human Resources Manager Lisa Rea over the amount of town staff overtime. Rea had her report ready and wanted to give it to the board. San Miguel wanted more time to work on his part of it. Rea said, "I've spent a lot of time on this over the last three weeks. I don't need more time. My report is complete, and I'm prepared to share it with you (trustees)."

San Miguel said public works staff hadn't been contacted as a group, and they would be the ones most affected.

"It's been a month," Robbins said.

DeKay told San Miguel, "I think the (Feb. 18) directive was for you and Lisa to work together. That's evidently a little bit broken."

San Miguel said, "I think it's a better process if we have everybody's input at one time."

Trustee Tom Atencio countered, "You've had most of a month... The lady went through the effort to make a recommendation. You should have got on it."

He made the motion to receive Rea's recommendations. Trustees voted 4-1 to do that. San Miguel said he could have his report for the April 1 meeting.

At the April 1 meeting, San Miguel presented his recommendations on managing overtime with some tweaks to what Rea had recommended.

Cox said the issue was how comp time versus overtime is managed and recorded. "I think the underlying issue is management. How your time is used, how it accumulates," she said.