The Ouray Police Department’s administrative assistant has resigned, leaving the office with one remaining employee assigned to desk duty.

The resignation comes just after the city’s response to a civil lawsuit from Sgt. Matt Troxell, who still reports to work and is suing the city for damages.

Friday is Lucy Reeder’s last day. She told the Plaindealer she had enough, after continuing to work for the defunct department for more than seven months after the interim chief’s contract wasn’t renewed in December.

“I spent 10 months, 60 hours a week working here to put this place back together to sit here for 10 months since then and twiddle my thumbs and have rights taken away from me,” she said. “I can’t do a lot of my job that I did before.”

Reeder, who moved to Ouray from Panama for the job, said she continued to do whatever the city asked her to do during her tenure. She helped the parks and recreation department with tasks, but said she mostly just sat in the police department without much to do since the city contracted with the sheriff’s office for law enforcement services. She said she has not received communication about her shrinking job responsibilities and just lost access to some of her former duties, such as handling communications and reporting with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. She said she also lost the ability to seal records, and that has been transferred to the Montrose Police Department.

“I’ve organized the office,” she said. “I don’t know why, but I have.”

She also expressed frustration with a lack of information about the city’s plans for either rebuilding the police department or shutting it down.

“They don’t tell us anything,” she said. In an interview Tuesday, City Administrator Michelle Metteer said she didn’t know why Reeder lost access to CBI records or to the system used to communicate with the state agency.

Reeder submitted her letter of resignation on Aug. 5. She provided a copy of the letter to the Plaindealer.

“Unfortunately I have come to this decision after eight months of experiencing a lack of transparency from the city administrator,” she wrote. “I am particularly concerned about my personnel file, which is missing documents that cannot be located.”

Those documents included her medical records, a background check the police chief conducted on Reeder and her fingerprints. There were also complaints that contents of other employees’ personnel files, including sensitive information in background checks, were mishandled by the city.

Reeder said city officials have “avoided addressing these issues” since an internal investigation was conducted back in March after she and Troxell filed complaints.

” As of today there is still no answer from the city administrator,” she said in her letter.

Metteer told the Plaindealer in June that the personnel files had been located and moved to the Human Resources office for safekeeping, as the city policy requires. Reeder said that’s not true in the case of her personal information, which she said is still missing.

Reeder also accused city leaders, specifically Metteer and the city council, of leaving her and Troxell in limbo, without a clear future for the department.

“(They) keep kicking the can down the road instead of dealing with it,” she said. “They need to be held accountable to the community because they’re not doing what they say they’re doing.”

At a city council meeting in January, Reeder asked what would happen to her position if the sheriff’s office took over policing duties. She said she didn’t want to leave.

Ouray Mayor Michael Underwood responded he was “quite certain that there will be a spot” for Reeder and assured her that her experience keeping records and what she contributed to policing in the community was “invaluable.”

Reeder’s departure is the latest in an exodus for the department, which former interim Chief Daric Harvey attempted to rebuild during his nine-month tenure.

During that time, he hired Reeder, Troxell and two officers.

Though the department continued to operate for a short period of time in January, it soon fell apart after an officer quit and Metteer placed Troxell and one other officer on administrative desk duty on Jan. 26, removing him from any patrol duties or any work that would require him to enforce the law or make arrests. She cited concerns about training.

Troxell publicly criticized the city council and Metteer in March for their inaction and the uncertainty in the department, leaving him and Reeder in limbo. Ouray County Sheriff Justin Perry offered to hire and train officers for a new chief, to rebuild the Ouray Police Department, but the city has not moved forward with that proposal. The building across from city hall, which the city purchased in 2025 for $675,000 and intended to remodel for a police station, remains empty. The city continues to pay more than $34,000 per year to lease three hybrid police SUVs, which sit unused across from the sheriff’s office up the hill from city hall.

Reeder said she tried to start the vehicles to move them two months ago, and they are dead.

Metteer said Tuesday the city is in the middle of an annual contract to lease the SUVs. She said city leaders won’t decide what to do with those vehicles after this year until they determine the future of the police department. She acknowledged the Gold Mountain Fire “bumped back” that decision.

Metteer said should the council decide to continue to contract with the Ouray County Sheriff’s Office for law enforcement services, she assumes the city won’t renew the lease for the SUVs and instead return them. Reeder’s departure is the latest in the decline of the police department, which has been in limbo while the city debates whether to rebuild it and hire a new chief and continues to pay the Ouray County Sheriff’s Office for law enforcement services.

The council initially decided in May to rely on Perry and his staff to hire and train officers, then turn them over to the city once Metteer hired a police chief. They reversed course two weeks later, telling Metteer in early June to ask the sheriff to come up with a cost for the sheriff’s office to continue to provide police services, believing it would cost less than reviving the police department.

There has been no movement on that front, however, due to the emergency demands of the Gold Mountain Fire and subsequent flash flooding.

Instead, city leaders are looking to hire a non-sworn code compliance officer to handle complaints including parking, weeds and snow removal.

Meanwhile, it’s unclear what Troxell, who is paid $88,275.20 per year by the city, does at work.

Troxell filed a lawsuit in May against the city, accusing city officials of broken promises, retaliation and defamation. He claims the city enticed him to leave his job at the CIA and didn’t keep its word – namely regarding training and a requirement that later arose for him to live closer to the city than he was originally told.

The city’s response to the lawsuit denies these claims.

Asked by the Plaindealer what Troxell does on a dayto- day basis and whether he could perform the code compliance officer job, Metteer declined to answer, saying she didn’t think she was authorized to speak about that because she’s been advised not to discuss employment matters.

Troxell previously declined to tell the Plaindealer what his job duties entail since he was placed on desk duty.

Reeder said she had hoped to transfer to another department within the city but feared she would be fired during a probationary period.

She instead applied for another administrative assistant job at a police department in North Carolina. When she was offered the job, she said her attorney, Eric Feldman, advised her to take it.

“He said, ‘Go and let another job appreciate you because this city does not,'” she said.

Reeder said the hardest part is leaving a community she joined and built relationships in, making friends. She joined the Ouray Elks Lodge, she was active in the Woman’s Club of Ouray County and other organizations.

“I love everyone in this community. They have been part of my family for the last year and a half,” she said. She said she’s sad to leave but she’s angry about this lingering situation.

“I’m angry at our city council … for pushing everything down the road. Like it doesn’t matter, like our lives are just going to sit still forever,” she said. “And I’m not sitting still anymore. I’m going to move on.” Plaindealer co-publisher Mike Wiggins contributed to this report.