Lawsuit filed against the City of Rehoboth Beach over the hiring of their new City Manager

REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. – The City of Rehoboth Beach has been hit with a lawsuit over the hiring of their new City Manager, Taylour Tedder.

WMDT News sat down today with Tom Gaynor, a Rehoboth homeowner who’s been vocal on the controversy surrounding Tedder’s hiring.

At the heart of that controversy has been Tedder’s salary. A whopping $250,000 as a base salary with another $750,000 in the form of a forgivable loan to help him buy a new home. That pay far surpasses the average salary of city managers in other nearby, much larger cities such as Baltimore, Philadelphia and even Wilmington.

“There is something deeply and profoundly wrong going on in Rehoboth with its governance and the conduct of the City Commission,” Gaynor stated. “At this point, if there is an interception of a legal process, it’s up to the city to really figure out how it wants to be governed, and how the commissioners are going to conduct themselves.

Gaynor filed the lawsuit last week in Chancery Court, a suit that seeks declaratory relief and rescission of Tedder’s employment agreement, meaning that if the judge rules in their favor it could potentially cancel Tedder’s contract with the City of Rehoboth Beach.

“We have asked that the number one thing that is at stake here is that there are two instances of charter violations,” Gaynor explained. “One, the qualifications, and number two, the termination provisions, for which the Commission had no right to enter into that agreement.”

That agreement being to pay Tedder the huge salary, which just so happens to be one of the largest of any public servant in the State of Delaware, and one of the largest of its kind in the country. An agreement that appears to have violated the city’s code as Tedder’s qualifications did not meet the town charter’s requirements at the time of his hiring.

“If we don’t hold the Commission accountable to the law of Rehoboth, what does that say about the next issue that is potentially harmful to homeowners and to voters, and to the citizens of Rehoboth?” Gaynor asked. “Does no law apply to the Commission?”

Rehoboth Mayor Stan Mills, the Board of Commissioners, and Tedder are all named in the lawsuit. Gaynor says they all had ample opportunity to make this right, but instead, throughout the entire process, they’ve chose to shut the people out.

“It seems somewhat silly and arbitrary for the Mayor to impose a restriction on the citizens to say – ‘you won’t talk to me about the fundamental aspect of the lack of qualifications for the contract we signed’,” Gaynor said. “That’s not acceptable for people in a governing position and, ideally, a judge will agree with us.”

Moving forward, Gaynor is hopeful that the lawsuit yields a result that sends a message to the leaders of Rehoboth.

“We hope that a judge will say ‘no, the law of Rehoboth applies to the commissioners, as well as to the citizens’,” Gaynor said. “‘They violated the law, and I’m gonna fix it.'”

WMDT News Anchor Rob Petree spoke with Mayor Stan Mills earlier this year, in the midst of the controversy surrounding Tedder’s hiring, where he would not acknowledge that they violated their charter, and refused to get into specifics concerning Tedder’s qualifications.

“How do you justify directly violating your own charter to hire this guy?,” Petree asked Mayor Mills. Mayor Mills responded, saying: “We don’t believe we’ve violated the charter and our City Solicitor is working on a proper response to that.” When pressed, Mayor Mills would not comment further on any questions regarding Tedder’s qualifications, saying “I’ve already answered that.”

In June, the Delaware Attorney General’s Office found that the City of Rehoboth Beach violated the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) after a group of 40 residents, including Gaynor, filed a request, calling for answers on information surrounding Tedder’s hiring.

WMDT News reached out to the City of Rehoboth Beach who would not comment on the lawsuit, saying “the city generally doesn’t comment on matters related to ongoing litigation.”