Gabe Solmer was not expecting to lose her job when she was called into a meeting with city management June 28. She hadn’t received any recent signs that her work leading the Portland Water Bureau for nearly four years was inadequate, and her last annual performance review had been glowing.
But, within a matter of minutes, Solmer learned she was being fired without cause and that her time at the Water Bureau, which manages the regional drinking water system that serves over 1 million people daily in Portland and beyond, had come to an end. Her boss at the time, City Commissioner Mingus Mapps, told her she had done nothing wrong and offered no other explanation. She was offered 21 days of paid leave to decide whether she wanted to accept the firing or to resign voluntarily, an option that came with six months’ severance. A June 28 letter signed by Mapps details this agreement.
While bureau directors are considered at-will employees, meaning they can be fired without explanation under state law, Solmer told OPB that she was still “blindsided” by the news.
“I asked if I could just stay and continue doing the work I loved,” she told OPB. “I was told no.”
On Friday, July 26, Solmer submitted her resignation letter and accepted $141,277 in severance. In Solmer’s letter, which she posted on her LinkedIn profile, she lamented city leaders not offering her respect or transparency in the process.
To Solmer, the decision comes not only as a personal affront after years of lauded work, but it’s also a sign of how city leadership plans to start anew as it enters a new governance structure next year.
“The city is going through a lot right now,” she said. “And if something as disruptive and destabilizing as this can happen to other bureaus without any explanation… it’s not going to help.”
Mapps did not respond to OPB’s request for comment.
For more than 100 years, Portland council members have acted as bureau administrators as well as legislators – with each commissioner overseeing an average of four departments. In 2025, the city’s bureaus will no longer report to city commissioners, but will be overseen by a new city administrator. That voter-approved transition began a day after Solmmer was placed on leave, when all bureaus were reorganized under Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office, to be run by interim City Administrator Michael Jordan. As first noted out by Willamette Week, that meant Mapps pushed Solmer out of office on his very last day overseeing the Water Bureau.
Days before her fateful meeting, Solmer and other bureau directors gathered with Wheeler, who explained the benefits of the reorganization.
“I remember him saying this was good for the stability and unity of the city,” Solmer said. “This doesn’t feel like a continuation of that.”
In a July 26 statement announcing her resignation, both Wheeler and Mapps thanked Solmer for her service leading the Water Bureau through a challenging time, including work overseeing the design and early construction of a new water treatment plant in the Bull Run Watershed.
FILE: In this 2019 photo, miniature versions of water filters are part of the Portland Water Bureau’s tests for the future filtration system. Portland has been operating from the Bull Run Watershed for more than 100 years.
Kaylee Domzalski / OPB
Wheeler selected Solmer’s former deputy director, Edward Campbell, to replace her. While Solmer said she strongly supports Campbell’s leadership, she worries about how the abrupt and unexplained change will affect her former employees.
“A lot of them are scared right now,” Solmer said. “I told them that this change [in government] wasn’t going to change anything, and now this happens.”
Carrie Belding, a spokesperson for interim City Administrator Jordan, said the city will host a “town hall” for Water Bureau employees in the coming weeks where staff can ask questions to city managers about the government overhaul.
“Supporting employees during Portland’s transition is a top priority,” Belding wrote in an email to OPB.
She added that, “while leadership turnover is inevitable” in a government the size of Portland’s, the city administrator’s office does not anticipate more bureau directors leaving or being asked to leave during the transition.
Solmer was the first woman to lead the Water Bureau. She helped elevate other women in the department to leadership roles, winning awards for their work along the way.
Solmer said she has no animosity for Portland or its leaders, and remains proud of the bureau she left behind. But she does hope that city leadership takes a lesson from her experience.
“What’s best for the city right now is to focus on how best to support its workers,” she said. “They deserve transparency and collaboration when it comes to decision-making. That’s how the city can show its values as it makes this transition.”
This story may be updated.