Termination

As you all likely know by now, our City Council majority terminated our City Manager’s contract this past Tuesday night as expected. I have talked about the process that they used to do this in previous blogs so I will not go into much of the process again here. However, it was clear from the testimony that the reason for the termination had nothing to do with performance, nor with budgets.

There was an agreement to be made but the majority was unwilling to do so. As a result the City will spend tens of thousands of dollars on additional attorney fees, an arbitration process and, in the end, pay the City Manager the amount outlined in his contract. If it ends up with a trial, damages could be added on as well. It is likely that this entire process as done by this Council majority could cost the City a half million dollars or more from our general fund. All unbudgeted.

From what I am hearing on the street and from the phone calls I am getting, the public is outraged by the process and by the fact the Council is unwilling to honor a contract with a valued employee. This includes many in the Council Chambers on Tuesday night that were unaware of the circumstances and process the Council was following.  So what is in store for the rest of our City’s employees?

It is clear that this Mayor and the Council majority have created a hostile and intimidating work environment for all of our employees. Remember, many of these employees are working to cover more than one job due to our overall staffing shortages and budget issues. Are they next in the barrel? Are they to have the Council tear up their existing agreements and dictate new terms or be terminated?

This unfortunate episode will further undermine the credibility of our Council, put our City employees on the defensive and further erode our City’s ability to provide the core services we demand.

Very simply put, none of this needed to happen. If the Council had acted in good faith, met face to face to with the City Manager or even simply followed the terms of his contract we would not have had to go through this ill fated and expensive process.

More later