EDITORIAL: Accountability

CITY ADMINISTRATOR STEVE Powers was hired in 2011. His job performance during the past 3 years has not yet been evaluated by City Council. The Charter requires Council to evaluate both the City Administrator and the City Attorney annually. The Council’s Administration Committee is responsible for initiating and overseeing that process. Mayor Pro Tempore Margie Teall has held a seat on the Administration Committee since 2006 and Mayor Hieftje since 2008. Ward 3 Council member Christopher Taylor was given a spot in 2011 and Ward 2 Council member Sally Hart Petersen joined the group in 2012. In Fall 2013, Ward 1 Council member Sabra Briere was appointed to that committee.

Prior Mayor Pro Tempore Marcia Higgins made certain that Council members produced written evaluations of both the City Administrator and City Attorney. Higgins then gathered and compiled the information and the Administration Committee presented their recommendations to their Council colleagues. In general, former City Administrator Roger Fraser and City Attorney Stephen Postema were awarded lump sum bonuses and/or allowed to cash out sick time and vacation time rather than being given raises, which would have been more easily uncovered by the media and clearly understood by the public.

We believe holding the City Administrator and the City Attorney accountable for their failures and recognizing their accomplishments is an important part of Council members’ jobs. That the five members of the Administration Committee—three of whom are running to serve as mayor—fell down on the job so profoundly does a disservice not only to their Council colleagues but to the public, who expect their elected officials to do the jobs for which they are paid.

Ward 2 Council member Sally Hart Petersen is in charge of the evaluation of City Attorney Postema, designing the tool used and initiating the process. She has taken months to begin the evaluation and is pushing her colleagues to use an online surveying tool to gather evaluative data rather than written evaluations. Council members should not use Zoomerang or SurveyMonkey to answer questions about the performance of any staff member. A paper trail, while perhaps shielded from Freedom of Information Act requests, nonetheless allows Council members to view the comments of all their colleagues prior to the final evaluation being released to the employee, Council and the public.

There must be no question but that Council members’ comments about the City Administrator and the City Attorney are accurately reflected in the final evaluations prepared by the members of the Administrative Committee. Newer members of this City Council will certainly view the job performance of the City Attorney, for instance, differently than the longest-serving members of the Council Administration Committee.

Coupled with the fact that Council member Taylor has sponsored just a handful of resolutions in his six years on Council, neglecting a crucial Charter mandated duty for half of his time in office raises questions. That Council member Petersen has taken months to conduct one evaluation raises questions about how she would get more complex tasks done in a timely manner. Evaluations of both the City Administrator and the City Attorney must be done.