CC Minutes - 07/18/05 WS - Laserfiche WebLink

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Mr. Pryor was pleased with the relationship he had developed with the manager and looked forward to building an even better relationship. He appreciated the high priority the manager assigned to improved communications with the council. Ms. Solomon acknowledged City Manager Taylor interest in building relationships with the council and his interest in being accountable to the council. She believed he took the concern seriously. She said she had personally found City Manager Taylor to be accountable. Ms. Solomon expressed appreciation for the enthusiasm the manager brought to the job and said she did not know how he maintained it. She appreciated his leadership style and thought him an excellent manager, as demonstrated by the response he received from staff and to the council. Presentations were tighter and better and the agenda item summaries had improved, which she attributed to the direction of the manager. Ms. Solomon said the manager was remarkable in helping her address constituent requests, and she relied on him for that purpose. She expressed appreciation for the work he did to help her "navigate through the system" to assist her constituents. Mayor Piercy called for a second round of comments. Mr. Kelly said some of his lower evaluation scores were attributable to the fact some issues continued to exist. He acknowledged that individual councilors had no individual policy power, but once the council had passed a motion or resolution, he felt that on occasion its intent was not followed through and the final product was not what was requested. He said he wanted the manager's professional advice on operations and his professional advice on policy issues, but only once. There had been occasions on which he felt that Mr. Taylor had crossed the line to become the "ninth councilor." Mr. Kelly thanked the managers and line employees who took the time to write evaluations. He found them interesting and valuable. He thought an interesting trend could be detected in that the most critical reviews were from employees at the line level, and the most positive were from the executive staff. Ms. Taylor believed the council's goals had been twisted when they returned in the form of action plans. For example, the goal for arts and the outdoors seemed to have become a marketing campaign, which was not what she envisioned. She thought the manager should ask the council what it wanted rather than present a completed program. Mr. Pap6 agreed the council was a diverse group. For his own part, he did not perceive public relations as being propaganda and said he did not see a problem with a marketing campaign in regard to the goal for the arts and outdoors. Mr. Pap6 believed the manager had done a good job of communicating the council's goal to the organiza- tion. He believed that the goals process demonstrated that if council acted as a policy body, gave clear direction to the manager, and monitored his performance, the organization ran more smoothly than if councilors attempted to act as "little city managers" or department heads and try to micromanage it. Ms. Bettman returned to her complaint regarding the manager's strict interpretation of the charter. She believed there was a natural tension between the functions of the manager and the council. However, she had seen more examples of where the council was circumvented in its policy making by processes that precluded it from making a policy decision or by situations where issues came to the council so fully MINUTES--Eugene City Council July 18, 2005 Page 7 Work Session