As long-time City of Reno employee Alex Woodley suddenly left his well-paid position last week, we’ve made a request for information for his resignation letter, the alleged insubordination which led to the alleged discovery of improper text messages from his city phone, as well as for his text messages themselves.
His last Transparent Nevada record had him at a Code Enforcement director salary of over $169,000, surpassing $238,000 with benefits. Woodley’s LinkedIn still had himself in that position even though the City of Reno confirmed he is no longer employed by the city.
Reporting by Picon Press found his name came up when Maureen McKissick, a former assistant to the city manager, was deposed in June 2018 in a case against the City of Reno, filed with a former communications director, which was eventually settled for $300,000.
McKissick quotes Mayor Hillary Schieve as saying her assistant at the time Madeline Burak, now Madeline Armstrong working with the Office of Governor Joe Lombardo, had shown her messages she had received from Woodley, “which were way over the line in terms of being explicit and suggestive, and Madeline didn’t know how to handle it, and the mayor was very, very upset by this.”
We reached out to Armstrong about this but did not hear back. Woodley has not responded to our email asking for comment about this matter.
In the next part of her testimony, McKissick said two days after that councilwoman Naomi Duerr came in tears concerning information about allegations of sexual harassment against then city manager, now Vice President of Administration and Finance at UNR, Andrew Clinger. The Reno City Council terminated Clinger in 2016 with a $228,000 severance package, and found in its own funded investigation there had been a hostile work environment under his watch, but not enough evidence to substantiate sexual harassment.
Woodley was elected to the Washoe County School Board of Trustees seat for District E in June after initially being selected to replace Angie Taylor several years ago.
When asked if they had concerns about this situation, the Washoe County School District said we should write to the City of Reno, which suggested we file the public records request.
We will update if we receive more interesting information. If you have any information you’d like to share, don’t hesitate to reach out.
Our Town Reno reporting, October 2024