The Oak Harbor city council is going to iron out some issues that had some members upset with the city administration at a special council retreat today.

The new city administrator, Thomas Myers, is running the retreat at Oak Harbor Senior Center’s newly-built adult day care facility from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

At the top of the agenda will be a controversy over council members requesting information from city staff. They say they are upset that they haven’t received data they repeatedly asked for from either staff members or Mayor Patty Cohen.

But they also say they are very hopeful that Myers will solve the problems in the future.

Councilwoman Sheilah Crider said she asked two months ago for a breakdown of the number of city employees, personnel expense by department, department budgets over a three year period, equipment rental expenses and other financial information. She never received any of the information.

So at the last council meeting, Crider put her request in writing.

Crider said the council members need to have a complete understanding of the city budget before they can begin making the hard decisions in balancing next year’s troubled budget.

“We need to know where to begin, where the escalating costs arose,” she said. “I want hard and fast, real-life figures. … It can’t be that dang hard to find.”

Councilman Paul Brewer said he’s been asking for data and has been ignored for years. Last summer he asked for a check-off list of permits and fees that the city requires for construction projects. He never got it.

He said he’s also requested, unsuccessfully, a list of the number of city employees and salaries.

What really angers Brewer is that he’s been asking for years, he said, for information about annexing Goldie Road. He said he requested economic data about the businesses and legal information on how to proceed with an annexation.

But with a recent state Supreme Court ruling that throws out the petition method of annexation, the issue of annexing Goldie Road is dead — at least for time being.

“They procrastinated all this time,” he said, “and now it’s too late.”

Councilman Bob Morrison also said he’s had “some trouble” getting information from the city in the past, but adds he’s certain that with Myers coming on it will be a problem of the past.

“Tom (Myers) assured me that he wants to set up an open, two-way, back and forth,” Morrison said.

In addition, council members say they have concerns about Cohen making unilateral decisions.

A number of council members were upset, for example, that the administration dumped the free garbage day without their knowledge. Or that Cohen changed the city’s mission statement — without briefing the council — on the new City Hall sign from calling Oak Harbor the “premier waterfront city” to the “premier Navy” city.

Myers said he’s aware of the council’s concerns and has already started addressing them. He hopes to learn more about the perceived problems and begin clearing up the issues at the retreat.

“Clearly the council members should have everything up front, straight on …” he said. “We’re making a commitment that everything we have is theirs.”

At the same time, Myers points out that the city had previously been short staffed, particularly with the lack of a city administrator, and some of the information the council requested was extremely complex.

At the retreat, Myers said he also hopes to address council policy, the budget process, council travel policy and travel budget, and how to develop trust between the council and administration.

“Another thing we’re going to look at,” he said,“ is “how do we judge success in the end?’”