MARYSVILLE — One question in the race to determine who will be Marysville’s next mayor apparently is something some people in this community don’t want to talk about.
Is NormaJean Dierck, a former City Council member now making a bid for the full-time mayor’s post, healthy enough to do the job?
That question, which triggered a chorus of boos when asked at a recent candidates forum, arises because of Dierck’s work history.
For more than a decade, Dierck, 45, has not been employed except as a part-time City Council member from 1998 to 2002.
Dierck said a neck injury in a bathtub fall 12 years ago rendered her incapable of holding a job, and she has lived on state disability payments since then. If elected on Nov. 4, the candidate said she would no longer be eligible for disability support.
Her opponent, retired Marysville businessman Dennis Kendall, 60, hasn’t raised questions about Dierck’s health. Instead, he has campaigned on his own qualifications for the job and what he wants to accomplish in the city he has called home for 30 years.
Marysville’s mayor manages a city with 214 employees and oversees a budget of $102 million.
Dierck said she views the election as something of a job application, with voters deciding whether she is hired. She is confident that any of her physical limitations won’t hinder her performance.
"I wouldn’t be running if I felt that way," she said. "I wouldn’t let the people down."
Her disability has been a matter of record since she first entered the public arena nearly six years ago. Dierck has regularly filed state public disclosure documents describing disability payments as her primary income.
While she was on the council, Dierck said she had to pay close attention to how much money she received from the city as compensation for her work as an elected official. If she’d been paid too much for council work, it could have jeopardized her disability status.
That isn’t an issue for the mayor’s position.
Marysville residents in 2002 voted to maintain the mayor’s position as a full-time job. It pays $71,000 a year, although Dierck has been campaigning on a promise to accept no more than $60,000, the amount the mayor was paid at the time she filed for office.
In answer to questions about her health, Dierck presented The Herald with letters from her family doctor in Marysville. The letters describe her disability as stemming from a neck fracture, and clear her for government service but not any strenuous physical work.
"I have no question about her competency to do regular daily activities and perform at the highest medical and ethical levels," Dr. Roland Feltner wrote. "She is not on any medications or under medical treatment and also has no long-term medical problems that would affect her ability to govern in a professional capacity."
Dierck said she decided to ask for the letters because she expected that someone would question her physical ability to lead.
In particular, Dierck said she wanted to have something in writing to respond to issues that were raised from 1991 to 1993, while she was in the midst of a divorce and a medical crisis.
At the time, Dierck told the court that she was totally disabled and suffering from what she believed was chronic, fatal multiple sclerosis.
Her ex-husband and his attorney challenged the diagnosis and Dierck’s mental competency. They asserted in court papers that Dierck had "a psychological impairment which is complicated by the excessive use of medications."
The court ruled Dierck was legally competent to handle her own affairs and the divorce action ended with a settlement.
As part of the agreement, Dierck reserved the right to any legal judgment she might have against the doctor who had been treating her for multiple sclerosis, court papers show. Dierck never brought a case.
The doctor, who has since died, later had his medical license suspended when questions surfaced about his mental health and medical practices. In 2001, a jury awarded more than $2 million to a Spokane family after they proved the doctor had engaged in a pattern of prescribing dangerous levels of narcotic drugs to his patients.
In an interview, Dierck said that she, too, was receiving large amounts of pain medication from the doctor, who had misdiagnosed her as having MS. She added that her problem with pain-controlling drugs had been building for years after she was injured in the early 1980s while working on a fishing boat in Alaska.
"I became addicted to pain pills. That’s the bottom line," Dierck said.
She said she went into drug treatment in 1993. She said her problems were traced to the neck injury from the bathtub fall and damage that had previously gone undiagnosed. She said relief from the worst symptoms came through massage therapy and exercise.
Dierck’s divorce file is a public record, although it has more frequently been the focus of whisper campaigns against her in Marysville. The candidate said her detractors are in error when they try to connect her current disability to the issues she was dealing with in the early 1990s.
Kendall has not been raising questions about Dierck’s health. He said he wants to be elected mayor on his own merits.
The candidate said he has gained valuable experience working roughly four decades at jobs ranging from vocational education teacher to law office manager and a supervisor managing budgets up to $20 million and hundreds of employees.
He said that Marysville needs to look outward, to realize how it is perceived in the region and address, as a community, any issues that may be holding it back.
Take schools, for example, Kendall said. Quality education is key to attracting business, and Marysville’s mayor can play an important role in building consensus for how best to move beyond the bitter 49-day teachers strike, he said.
He wants the city to do a better job of absorbing its growing population and attracting new businesses to bring jobs.
"The deal is you need to sit down and negotiate," he said. "Negotiating to me is that both sides win."
Dierck said she opposes rapid commercial and residential growth. She wants to encourage smaller businesses to make Marysville home instead of large corporations with big stores.
Dierck said she brings to the mayor’s job an appreciation for how government decisions affect people and their neighborhoods. She said she can relate to seniors and others living on low incomes because she’s had to struggle to make ends meet as well on a fixed income.
The challenges in her personal life have prepared her to lead, Dierck said.
"It’s made me a stronger person, a more capable person and more compassionate," she said.
Reporter Scott North: 425-339-3431 or north@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
