CC Minutes - 09/17/08 Work Session

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Ms. Taylor suggested that a report from the City Manager should be a regular agenda item as typically the one-on-one meetings were focused on issues related to wards or individual councilors’ interests. Mr. Ruiz asked what type of information should be in the report. Ms. Taylor said the report should inform the council about things the City Manager was planning or thinking about, improvements to the organization or problems the council should know about. She said the manager was engaged in many activities of which the council was not aware. Mr. Pryor said it was challenging to measure the performance of a chief executive when the council was not aware of many activities, which is why many organizations had moved to a 360 degree evaluation approach. He said that type of evaluation could include the type of information the council would need to assess performance. He did not feel the need to pass judgment on the City Manager’s decisions and plans; he did feel the need to determine whether those decisions had worked. He said the council’s role was to evaluate the City Manager’s success and accomplishments and felt it would be relatively easy to obtain feedback from the organization and community to make that determination. His role was to evaluate the results of the City Manager’s decisions and actions, not micromanage City operations. Mr. Clark echoed Mr. Pryor’s remarks. He felt the information provided in weekly newsletters and briefings was useful in determining how the organization was succeeding. He said the council should evaluate whether the organization was high functioning in areas such as public safety. He noted that during the City Manager selection process many questions related to issues, goals and concerns had been developed and those could be helpful in crafting the evaluation document. Ms. Ortiz was satisfied with the four proposed evaluation categories. She said she hoped the personal attacks that had occurred during previous City Manager evaluations could be avoided in future evaluations. She said it would be helpful to have information about how the City Manager’s time was spent and the groups and individuals with whom he had contact. She wanted to know if the City Manager interacted primarily with executives and managers or also talked to line employees as she felt it was important to acknowledge and validate all employees. Mr. Poling said it was good to receive feedback from the City Manager, but did not want to burden him with providing the details of his daily activities. He said the primary question was whether the City Manager and the organization, through his direction, accomplished the goals and directives the council set forth. He liked the four evaluation categories, but did not like assigning numerical values to levels of performance. He felt the City Manager did a good job of keeping the council informed and liked receiving phone calls about emerging issues. He wanted feedback from others inside and outside the organization before conducting a performance evaluation. Ms. Piercy wanted the evaluation process to be helpful and provide feedback that would help the City Manager achieve his goals and the council’s goals. Ms. Taylor also did not like the numerical scoring method of evaluating performance. She wanted information about the City Manager’s activities from a broad perspective, not the details of daily activities. She said not all projects were successful and would not condemn someone just because of a failure that might be out of their control; it was commendable that the effort was made. She was not comfortable with receiving anonymous feedback. Ms. Smith explained there were advantages and disadvantages to anonymous feedback; it was sometimes difficult to interpret anonymous information, but often people provided more honest information if people could provide it anonymously. She said the council could MINUTES—Eugene City Council September 17, 2008 Page 4 Work Session