Dana Point Council Fires City Clerk

The Dana Point City Council voted Friday to fire the city clerk whose appointment 14 months ago led to charges of cronyism due to her relationship with the then-mayor.

Sharon Street lost her $90,000-a-year job, effective immediately, by a 4-1 vote at an emergency council meeting.

“The city clerk serves at the will of the council,” Mayor Wayne Rayfield said after the vote. “This was not a performance issue, it’s a political appointment, and the majority of the council felt we ought to seek a new clerk.”

Neither Street nor Councilman James V. Lacy, who voted against her ouster, could be reached for comment.

Rayfield, who was then a councilman, was among the harshest critics in November 2003, when the council hired Street without considering other candidates.

“By not having a competitive recruitment,” he said at the time, “I think we’ve done her as well as the city a disservice. People will always suspect that she has the job because she’s a close friend of the mayor.”

The man he was speaking of, William L. Ossenmacher, said he had known Street for 10 years, two of which had been spent in a romantic relationship.

Their involvement, he said, had nothing to do with her hiring.

“You hate to see good people dragged through the mud because of politics,” Ossenmacher said at the time.

Others countered that Street -- who majored in sociology at Cal State L.A., worked as a vocational counselor for 12 years and was a director of the South Coast Water District -- was not qualified.

Ossenmacher, who left the City Council in November, could not be reached for comment Friday.

Rayfield said he and Councilwoman Diane L. Harkey would meet next week to begin “putting together an open recruitment process” to find a successor.

“Miss Street was not appointed in an open process,” he said. “We expect to do this openly by advertising in various publications and such.”

He would not say how long that might take.

“The goal,” Rayfield said, “is to hire the best person we can find -- if it takes time, it takes time.”