Because summer, Corvallis City Councilors don’t generally meet on the first Monday of July, so when they meet this upcoming Monday, it’ll have been a month since their last proceedings.
Among the agenda items is a report from freshman Ward 8 Councilor Carolyn Mayers that essentially continues a conversation the Council has been having over recent months: Should the City pay an outside firm to evaluate the City Manager’s job performance?
The Council will also be considering what can probably be viewed as a competing proposal from Councilors Charlyn Ellis and Paul Shaffer, of Wards 5 and 7, respectively.
Regardless of which proposal is being considered, the theme of the conversation has so far centered on desires for an objective process and the benefit that can come from an outside perspective. Finally, at their last meeting the Council started talking real turkey, cost.
Hence, Mayers seeking and now reporting to the full City Council with a bid from a consulting company that regularly does this kind of work. The firm, Baker Tilly, sent a bid for $12,000. If selected, they would also offer the optional add-on of a salary survey for $900.
The proposal from Ellis and Shaffer is to have the Lane Council of Governments do the evaluation. The current cost estimate for that option would be $10,382.
In a memo to Council, Mayers said, “During the discussions of this topic, several Councilors, myself included, expressed the need for 1) additional proposals; 2) references from the proposed vendor to evaluate their effectiveness and; 3) additional detail from the proposed vendor on their process. To date Council has has not been provided enough information for an informed decision.”
“In response, and because Councilor Ellis had indicated that she had previously discussed the proposition of Baker Tilly doing this work with Carol Jacobs, I took the liberty of reaching out and obtaining the attached proposal for our consideration. The associate who would conduct the assessment has the expertise to conduct in a manner that would yield a fair and complete evaluation using best practices, and we have been provided dozens of references.”
Deeper look: Like most public officials, the current City Manager, Mark Shepard, has both fans and critics. Among both the public and the Council, opinions are somewhat divided.
Many voters view Shepard as instigating the effort to oust Ward 5 Councilor Charlyn Ellis in the middle of her prior term back in 2023. Some voters saw that as a positive, but overwhelmingly, most didn’t. The matter also divided the Council. In the end, a federal court effectively stayed the City’s ouster procedure and eventually found the City had acted both retaliatorily and unconstitutionally in their efforts to remove Ellis.
The City was ordered to pay Ellis’ legal expenses. The total cost from the municipal coffer after insurance was about half a million dollars. Even before the court’s findings, the whole matter had the effect of elevating Ellis’ popularity. She subsequently ran unopposed for her current term.
In short, Shepard’s next evaluation hasn’t become a political football yet, but it could. Even if that wasn’t the case, many cities hire consulting firms to help evaluate their top management, and that could be seen as driving the current conversation among City Councilors here in Corvallis.
For instance, Councilors at their last meeting wondered aloud about the practical prospects of tasking the City’s personnel department to help evaluate someone they, in fact, answer to. Could an outside firm that evaluates City Managers on the regular offer perspective the City Council cannot get any other way. There was also a discussion that to save dollars, some years the City Manager could be evaluated internally, and other years by an outside firm.
But, like we said, this could become a political football.
There has been some concern that the proposal from Ellis and Shaffer could be seen as payback for Shepard’s perceived role in seeking to oust Ellis back in 2023. Indeed, their proposal specifically seeks a process that is more heavily anonymized than would usually be anticipated. Even feedback from the City Councilors would be anonymized or even stay entirely confidential, which is plainly odd.
It should be worrying that the Council of Governments proposal says it would, “Review the report with Council leadership and incorporate feedback.” That feedback should be clearly identified as such in any final report, and it shouldn’t be permitted to edit or alter any of the content. Currently, the City believes the Council’s Leadership Committee is exempt from public meeting laws.
Ellis and Shaffer are seeking an immediate vote on their proposal, but this discussion may well continue for another few weeks or months, and it may be the City will seek more competing bids. The design of the evaluation could also become a separate conversation. We’ll keep you posted.
Beyond this evaluation: Sometimes city staffers are blamed for things they shouldn’t be blamed for.
The public seems to feel comfortable approaching the City Council with ideas to improve the City, which isn’t the case in every town. But the Council sometimes misses opportunities for a win when they ask staff to pursue an idea, only to let it die after an initial report. That’s not the staff’s fault; the Council needs to push more than they do. Staff, and by extension, the City Manager, needs more direction from our fair burgh’s electeds.
Likewise, with new challenges and uncertainties, local governments may need to move into areas customarily seen as the wheelhouse of state and federal government. Locally, health care looks like an example. The City’s response to the takeover of The Corvallis Clinic by Optum was essentially a nonresponse. It remains to be seen if our area’s local governments will now respond to Samaritan Health’s recently announced troubles.
By Hallie Greenberg and Steven J. Schultz
Update: This story originally reported the City Council would be considering one bid and has been updated to include bids from both Lane Council of Governments and Baker Tilly.
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