A former Bluffdale city official who narrowly lost the suburb’s mayoral race last fall says she was ousted from City Hall nearly three years earlier in retaliation for filing a gender discrimination complaint.

Connie Pavlakis worked for the city as an event coordinator until she was fired in 2023 — a few months after she submitted the discrimination complaint against the city, according to a lawsuit she filed on March 20 in U.S. District Court.

A Bluffdale spokesperson declined to comment due to the pending litigation.

Her termination on Jan. 5, 2023, was also 12 days before she would’ve been considered a vested employee, Pavlakis’ lawyer, Scott Sackett, said in a phone interview with The Salt Lake Tribune.

The lawsuit came after a federal investigation into a retaliation complaint she filed ruled against Bluffdale and found Pavlakis had a right to sue the city, according to the suit.

Pavlakis lost last year’s Bluffdale mayoral race to incumbent Natalie Hall by fewer than 70 votes, but the suit is unrelated to the election, Sackett said. Legal proceedings have been going on since Pavlakis first submitted a complaint for retaliation to the Utah Labor Commission in July 2023, he added.

Pavlakis was hired by the city in 2019, according to the lawsuit. She helped raise money for events and also worked on budget discussions with Bluffdale’s former finance director, Bruce Kartchner, who currently serves as the city manager, the suit says.

Pavlakis alleges in the suit that Kartchner mistreated Pavlakis and other female employees due to their gender, and that Kartchner screamed at Pavlakis. After an incident of “disparate treatment by Kartchner,” Pavlakis notified the city on July 28, 2022, that she planned to file a claim of gender discrimination, according to the suit.

Kartchner, who is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit, declined to comment, citing pending litigation.

Four days later, Bluffdale’s city manager at the time, Mark Reid, sent an email to all Bluffdale employees requesting feedback from volunteers who had just coordinated on Old West Days for the city, according to the suit. This request was “related specifically to Pavlakis’ duties” with the event, the suit alleges.

Reid is not named as a defendant and could not be reached for comment.

Pavlakis submitted her gender discrimination claim against Kartchner in August 2022, according to the suit. Within three days of filing her claim, the lawsuit says, the city held a meeting with event staff — and without Pavlakis — to discuss future improvements to Old West Days.

“Pavlakis was excluded from this meeting despite being the Bluffdale employee assigned oversight of all [Old West Days] events,” the filing states. “This exclusion was conducted as a result of Pavlakis’ filing of her gender discrimination claim.”

In late September 2022, Bluffdale completed its internal investigation of Pavlakis’ complaint, according to the suit. The city found “no instances of harassment or other discrimination” in its inquiry, the filing states, and Bluffdale then took steps to transfer Pavlakis’ job duties to other employees.

Many of Pavlakis’ responsibilities were assigned to Bluffdale Mayor Natalie Hall, although she was “grossly underqualified,” according to the suit. Pavlakis stayed on through the end of 2022, but was fired on Jan. 5 the following year, the filing states.

The suit alleges that Bluffdale only retained Pavlakis to finalize the oversight of two events that would have been difficult to transfer to another employee.

Pavlakis was terminated without cause, according to the suit.

The city later said that Pavlakis was terminated due to budget cuts, despite a pay increase to all Bluffdale employees that occurred in the same fiscal year as Pavlakis’ firing, according to the suit. Bluffdale also identified nearly $5 million in extra money for the city in May 2023, and the suit alleges the city was aware of these reserves before Pavlakis was fired.

“Bluffdale’s representation related to a purported need for budget cuts as the basis for Pavlakis’ termination was false,” the filing states. “... Bluffdale’s termination of Pavlakis was malicious and/or reckless in that it intended to take retaliatory action against her for asserting discrimination claims.”

The complaint Pavlakis filed to the state in 2023 was later transferred to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which issued its finding against Bluffdale in its own investigation last September, according to the suit.

That investigation found Pavlakis’ termination was in retaliation for her gender discrimination claim, but the city “refused to participate in conciliation efforts,” according to the lawsuit. On Jan. 8 of this year, the Department of Justice issued Pavlakis a notice of her right to sue the city.