New Records Raise Questions About Hagedorn’s First Months at City Hall
Mandy Hagedorn had been on the North Plains City Council for just two weeks when Washington County activist Aaron Nichols sent her a striking email.
“You requested I suggest a way to bring up the council rules,” Nichols wrote on January 20, 2025, “with the goal of seeing them rescinded.”
What followed was more than ordinary constituent commentary. Nichols supplied procedure, suggested language Hagedorn could use from the dais and advice for keeping the issue alive if four votes weren’t available.
Ten minutes later, Nichols sent Hagedorn, Mayor Ariel Goodwin and Councilors Aaron Dumbrow and Katie Reding another document — this one from Friends of North Plains Smart Growth and offered “in the spirit of a staff memo” — laying out steps for replacing the city attorney.
These episodes are documented in a large cache of city records recently obtained by The Real Friends of North Plains. The thousands of documents and emails contain incredible detail on the inner workings of City Hall and documentary linkage backing up our ongoing four-part series, How North Plains Reached the Fiscal Cliff.
Editor's note: Several readers have contacted us to provide documents and leads following our most recent story, What Was CPO 8 Up To in North Plains. You can email us at therealfriendsofnorthplains@gmail.com.
After removing duplicate email copies in the first cache of documents covering Hagedorn and her fellow councilors' first months, we found Nichols referenced in 22 distinct messages. Linda Galas-Merten, then CPO 8 chair, appears in eight. Other recurring figures include Nellie McAdams, former city planner Ron Bunch and future Councilor Mark DeForge.
Outside of DeForge, none of those people appear to be residents of the city of North Plains. In fact, the records show little early communication between Hagedorn and her constituents.
That raises a question:
Who was Councilor Hagedorn actually listening to?
The records themselves raise many new questions about Hagedorn’s role in this network and an early push to stifle public criticism she was facing from local residents.
In February, only weeks after taking office, Hagedorn asked Goodwin, copying Dumbrow, to explore stronger rules and “counter measures” for meeting attendees she deemed disruptive.
In another episode, City Manager Bill Reid warned city attorneys that he believed members of the new council majority might be violating Oregon public meetings law by engaging in serial meetings. Reid specifically identified Goodwin, Dumbrow and Hagedorn as the three he believed were meeting together. [Astute readers will know that three alone does not constitute a quorum. More details to come.]
Hagedorn and Dumbrow later voted to separate with Reid following a pressure campaign led by the same activists Hagedorn was closely communicating with in her early months. Gaps in the communications raise questions about how, and for what purposes, Hagedorn may have been communicating with activists outside of her official city email account.
Through these documents, we have learned that the current staffing crisis hitting North Plains government may not have been an accident. It appears to have been intentionally planned, with the support of outside activists, since at least March 2025.
The records reveal a previously unseen layer of communication around North Plains’ new government. And the first question stands out: How did Hagedorn make the request Nichols said she made?
It is another question worth answering. And so many more beyond that.
Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll show you these documents and more.
