To Downtown Spokane Partnership’s now-former president Mike Tedesco, the end came suddenly. Only two days after he was told to stop researching whether state law could be changed to allow the DSP to take over downtown parking enforcement from the city, he was told to either step down or be fired.
A little over a week later, in a three-hour meeting, the Downtown Spokane Partnership board went with the second option.
“They pulled the trigger on Mike,” attorney Bob Dunn said this morning. “They put a bullet right in the middle of his employment.”
Dunn says he plans to file a breach of contract lawsuit later this
afternoon. Dunn has been the attorney filing lawsuits against the termination of
everyone from MAC president Forrest Rodgers, former Sterling Savings president
Heidi
Stanley, to a firefighter incorrectly accused of possessing child pornography.
Dunn says he was not invited to the DSP board meeting last night where the vote to fire Tedesco took place.
“This was a private lynching,” Dunn says.
UPDATE: Todd Woodard, the incoming board president, stresses that the decision was unanimous.
"That the vote was 15-0 speaks to how absolute our decision was," Woodard says. "This was a very extensive and thorough process."
Officially, Tedesco was fired "without cause," and Woodard was unwilling to discuss in more detail why, exactly, Tedesco was fired, saying he wants to protect Tedesco's right to privacy.
In the meantime, Marla Nunberg, the DSPs interim president before Tedesco was hired, will serve in that role again as the board begins discussing a new hiring process.
