Seniors upset about City’s firing of popular activities coordinator at the center

Published 2:21 pm Wednesday, April 20, 2016

They used words like “honest,” “admired,” “really liked,” “loved him to pieces,” “can’t believe it,” and “the best PR man the senior center ever had” to describe former Auburn Senior Center Activities Coordinator Matt Davis.

They talked about how they had all benefited from his hard work setting up fishing derbies, enjoyed his presence on the center’s Tuesday walks, dug the trips to downtown Seattle and much more.

Which is why patrons of the center were thunderstruck last month when the City fired him.

Recently, Davis’ elderly fan base brought their disappointment and bewilderment to the Auburn City Council

Along with a petition signed by more than 50 of them, asking that Davis be reinstated.

“He served all seniors with respect, was very uplifting and attentive, courteous and kind,” Buckley resident John Rambur told the council. “Seniors always heard good words about Matt ….

“We cannot fathom any reason Matthew Davis was terminated from the Auburn Senior Center. The seniors were all blindsided. We believe the procedure for this terrible action should be amended. This has been a travesty,” Rambur said. ” … Matt needs professional representation and neutral arbitration.”

Auburn senior Ronald Green worked alongside Davis for the last three years in the Meals on Wheels program and found him always a hard worker, he said, personable and extremely helpful.

“It’s my hope that if … you are able to find out anything about this, find out if it’s a legitimate reason that he was let go, or if it was just a personnel conflict or anything like that,” Green said. “I don’t know what the criteria is to let somebody go from the senior center, but if doing a lot of work and trying to get different projects going and things like that is the criteria for firing somebody, then I guess he was the right guy to let go.”

Center volunteer and patron Yvonne Nicholson recalled that Davis treated each person there like he or she was his grandfather or grandmother.

“He was wonderful to everybody. Nobody ever heard him say a bad word about anybody. Always had a smile, very helpful, and we all miss him very much. We think he was wonderful person, and we have a hard time understanding why in the last couple years three people have been let go, and there’s only five people on staff. Before they fire somebody else, you’d be the perfect people to look into it. If there is a personality conflict, you should be above that,” Yvonne told City leaders.

Don Black said he understood why seniors are so upset.

“When you have a termination, it’s basically a human resources thing — you can’t lay everything out in front of the entire population. So the seniors down there are lacking background information. Suddenly, they are blindsided right out of left field when they thought everything was going beautifully, and one of the really fine employees of the center is terminated,” Black said. “The feeling down there is that people are really upset, but they don’t know why they are upset. They know they are losing a really caring person who stepped in there and did a beautiful job for us.”

Rambur asked the council what it could do to help Davis.

Mayor Nancy Backus said the City could not comment on a personnel matter.

“We are not going to discuss Matt’s employment status with the City because, as all of you would want if you had a termination, you would not want it to be publicized as to exactly why. That is private between the former employee and the City, and we won’t be going into any reasons behind it,” Backus said.