City Manager Evaluation is Council's Primary Responsibility

The relationship between the City Council and the City Manager is often compared to the private sector, with the Council serving as a Board of Directors and the Manager as CEO. Whether you like this analogy or not, it is useful for highlighting the basic responsibility that each Councilor has to the people of the city—evaluating the Manager’s performance. Like a Board of Directors who must determine if the CEO has run the company in a way that protects the shareholder’s interests, the Manager’s annual performance evaluation is a means of communicating goals and priorities.

In the past, Council approached the evaluation process haphazardly. The results were not great, and the City Manager was not provided much in the way of meaningful feedback. However, in 2004, Council adopted a new strategy for evaluations, creating a form that better reflected the key responsibilities of the Manager’s position, and providing an opportunity for Council to take a more active role in goal-setting.

The evaluation is supposed to occur on or before the anniversary date of the City Manager’s contract, which is July 19th. The evaluation looks back on the prior calendar year’s activities and accomplishments, and makes a recommendation for a salary increase to be included in the following year’s budget. The timing is meant to allow Council adequate time to complete the evaluation (the first quarter); to negotiate with the City Manager (the second quarter); for the City Manager to include the agreed upon increase in his budget proposal (third quarter); and for Council to approve it (fourth quarter) before beginning the process again the following January.

Unfortunately, it has never once gone so smoothly. This all came to a head in early February, when council voted 5-4 to grant the City Manager a 5% retroactive increase without an evaluation having been completed (you can read the minutes here). It brought to light the need for Council to regroup and commit to bringing some integrity back to the process.

On February 21, Council met to reach agreement on the evaluation process. You can see it detailed here. One month later, in March (meeting minutes available here), the Mayor indicated that a meeting with the City Manager would finalize the evaluation form and the process would begin. You can view the finalized form here. The evaluation form was distributed in April to all councilors and was due to the Mayor (via the City Clerk’s office) on May 31st. We look forward to the next step, which should be a special meeting of Council to review the evaluations, the City Manager’s self-evaluation, and to work on producing the consensus document to present to the City Manager as the “Council evaluation.”