Part Four: The Slate Won. Then the Appointments Began.
Don Weber appeared in Linda Galas-Merten’s CPO 8 action plan. Thirteen months later, the Council put him in office. Before that meeting ended, Weber nominated Mark DeForge. Six weeks later, he nominated Anna Warrington. All four elected members of “The 4” are gone. The appointment chain remains.
Part One showed how a public-body platform was steered toward politics. Part Two showed the recruitment and PAC backing of “The 4.” Part Three showed a taxpayer-funded CPO action plan built to pressure City Hall.
Part Four shows the handoff.
On Dec. 2, 2024, a CPO 8 action plan named Don Weber under a City Council public-comment assignment: “Don will comment.” City records show that he did just that.
Thirteen months later, on Jan. 5, 2026, the North Plains City Council ratified Weber’s appointment to a vacant Council seat. He took the oath. Before the meeting ended, Weber nominated Mark DeForge for the next vacancy.
Six weeks after that, Weber nominated Anna Warrington.
No theory is required. The action plan, emails, Council minutes and meeting video lay out the succession in sequence.
The 2024 slate won a Council majority. When vacancies opened, members of that majority used the appointment power to extend their political project beyond the people voters had elected.
The campaign ended. The outside advisory channel did not.
The appointment story did not begin in 2026. It began while “The 4” still held the Council majority.
On Jan. 20, 2025, Activist Aaron Nichols sent the four newly elected councilors a memo he said had been “written and looked over by others in our group.”
Nichols told the councilors the group was offering its advice “in the spirit of a staff memo,” because it was “difficult to get unbiased advice from your city manager and city attorney.” The memo laid out a process for replacing the City’s legal counsel and supplied possible attorney candidates.
That was an extraordinary posture for an outside advocacy group: City management and legal counsel were supposed to advise the Council. Nichols’s group positioned itself as the substitute.
On March 14, Nichols sent another memo—this one on budgeting—to the same four councilors. He wrote that he was sending it “to the four of you since you campaigned on more basic services and a more reasonable UGB expansion plan.” Linda Galas-Merten was copied.
The election was over. The alignment was not.
The four councilors were being addressed as a single political unit and supplied with governing advice by the network that had helped put them there.
DeForge introduced himself as an ally
Mark DeForge’s own emails show how he approached the new majority.
On Jan. 21, 2025, DeForge emailed Ariel Goodwin, Aaron Dumbrow, Mandy Hagedorn and Katie Reding—the four now-resigned members of the slate.
“I think you guys are doing a great job,” he wrote. “You’re focused on smart growth and being careful with tax dollars.”
He said former officials and property owners appeared to be making life difficult for them, then added that his family appreciated what they were doing.
On April 12, DeForge sent the same four councilors his application for the City Budget Committee. He described his professional accounting background, then made his political affinity explicit.
“I love that you guys were able to reset” DeForge wrote. “I’d love to get to know the city more and support you guys.”
On May 5, Hagedorn nominated DeForge for the Budget Committee. The Council approved him.
Two days later, DeForge wrote Goodwin again: “We’re big fans of yours, let us know how we can help out.”
DeForge did not present himself to the slate as a detached applicant. He praised its agenda, offered his support and asked to help. Hagedorn then moved him into his first City role.
Eight months later, Weber moved him onto the Council.
The UGB information route ran through Hagedorn and Galas-Merten
By July 2025, DeForge was also obtaining information on the City’s most consequential growth issue through the same political network.
On July 15, he emailed Galas-Merten at the Strong Towns North Plains address and copied Hagedorn.
“I heard from Mandy you have a copy of the city’s UGB grant,” DeForge wrote. “Can you forward to me so I can read it?”
The document’s public status misses the point. The route is the point:
Hagedorn → Galas-Merten → DeForge.
A sitting councilor directed a future councilor to the leader of Strong Towns North Plains for material about the City’s urban-growth-boundary work.
That documented route mattered when DeForge was later elevated to the Council and assigned a formal role in the UGB process.
One appointee nominated the next
The Jan. 5, 2026 Council meeting made the handoff visible.
First, the Council ratified its earlier decision to appoint Weber, by a 3–1 vote. Hagedorn made the motion. Katie Reding seconded it. Weber was sworn in that night.
Then the Council turned to its second vacancy.
Weber nominated DeForge. Hagedorn seconded the nomination. Hagedorn, Reding and Weber voted to advance him.
Within a single meeting, Weber went from Council appointee to the decisive participant in selecting another Council appointee.
At the Jan. 20 meeting, the Council formally appointed and swore in DeForge. DeForge immediately nominated Hagedorn to serve as Council president. Weber seconded the nomination.
The Council also named DeForge as its representative to the UGB advisory process—the same subject on which DeForge had sought material from Galas-Merten after Hagedorn pointed him her way.
The chain was now operating inside City Hall.
THE APPOINTMENT CHAIN Dec. 2, 2024: The CPO 8 action plan names Don Weber. Jan. 5, 2026: Weber is appointed and sworn in; Weber nominates DeForge. Jan. 20: DeForge is sworn in; DeForge nominates Hagedorn for Council president and receives the UGB assignment. Feb. 17: Weber nominates Warrington. March 2: Weber moves the appointment resolution; Hagedorn seconds it; Warrington joins the Council. |
Then Weber nominated Warrington
The process repeated.
Council minutes for Feb. 17 record Weber’s nomination of Anna Warrington for the remaining vacancy.
On March 2, Weber made the motion to adopt the resolution appointing Warrington. Hagedorn seconded. The Council approved the appointment unanimously.
That made three Council seats held by people voters had not elected to those positions: Weber, DeForge and Warrington.
Appointment by council is lawful. It is also political power, and the public record shows who exercised it.
The appointments were not isolated personnel decisions. They formed a chain. One appointee nominated two more. One of those new appointees helped install Hagedorn as Council president and took a seat in the City’s UGB work.
The Council was not simply filling chairs. It was reproducing a governing alignment.
The slate collapsed. The appointments survived.
By Aug. 21, 2026, all four elected members of “The 4”—Goodwin, Dumbrow, Reding and Hagedorn—had resigned. None completed even half of the four-year term voters gave them.
But the political effect of the slate did not leave with them.
Weber, DeForge and Warrington remained on the Council after Hagedorn’s resignation, as the City entered yet another round of vacancies and appointments.
Voters elected Goodwin, Dumbrow, Hagedorn and Reding. Voters did not elect Weber, DeForge or Warrington to those Council seats.
The minutes and video reviewed by TRFNP do not give residents a meaningful accounting of the political relationships behind the nominations. They do not explain Weber’s appearance in the CPO 8 action plan. They do not discuss DeForge’s private praise of the slate, his offer to support it or his UGB information route through Hagedorn and Galas-Merten. They record motions and votes—but not the lineage behind them.
That lineage matters.
North Plains does not need a shadowy-conspiracy theory to understand what happened. The documented version is more ordinary—and more troubling.
A publicly funded civic channel became a vehicle for political pressure. A PAC-backed slate won. Outside advocates advised it as a bloc. Vacancies opened. A participant named in the CPO action plan was appointed. He nominated two more people. One immediately helped install a former slate member as Council president and entered the UGB process.
The four candidates who won are gone.
The appointment chain their majority built is still governing.
NEXT IN PART FIVE
Ten days after Warrington’s appointment, Galas-Merten said the new councilor had asked to meet and appeared “willing to carry the ball.” On April 6, Warrington made the motion. DeForge seconded it.
READ THE RECORD
Public-records production reviewed by TRFNP: Nichols emails and memoranda dated Jan. 20 and March 14, 2025; Mark DeForge emails dated Jan. 21, April 12, May 7 and July 15, 2025; City Council minutes and meeting video dated Jan. 5, Jan. 20, Feb. 17 and March 2, 2026.
