On Monday, Corvallis’ City Councilors nixed that whole idea of paying a third party to evaluate City Manager Mark Shepard’s job performance. Instead, they’ll do as they always have, but just a little better; evaluate the Manager themselves.
This is no small decision, here’s the background. The City Manager is our fair burgh’s top administrator, and the one employee that is absolutely answerable to the City Council. They decide if he stays on, and what his pay will be. And like many employees, he undergoes a yearly performance review.
Now, just who will conduct that review has been a bone of contention among the City Councilors for more than a year. And the settlement for that controversy, that’s what was decided on Monday. So, let’s get into what was said.
Ward 9 Councilor Tony Cadena proposed scuttling the plan to hire an outside firm, arguing the Council can develop its own robust and predictable review process for yearly evaluations without spending $25,000 to pay someone else for those services. With the City facing budget shortfalls, he in essence argued there may be better uses for those dollars.
Ward 3 City Councilor Jim Moorefield said that as a new Councilor he initially supported hiring an outside evaluator. But now that he’s participated in a City Manager’s evaluation, he believes the Council can do the work themselves.
Ward 5 Councilor Charlyn Ellis, however, argued that Council had promised the public they would hire an outside evaluator. But that’s not how Ward 8 Councilor or Mayor Maughan remembers it.
Mayers responded to Ellis saying Council had agreed among themselves to explore hiring an outside evaluator – and that was it. Now with that exploration complete, Mayers said she felt the City wouldn’t gain much, or certainly not enough to justify the size of the expenditure.
Mayor Maughan then responded, explaining his recollection was the same as Mayers’. He too expressed the belief the City would be better off not spending the money.
Conversely, Ward 7 Councilor Paul Shaffer argued that hiring a third-party would not necessarily be an ongoing expense and the Council would benefit from the experience, learning more about how they should conduct these evaluations on their own in the future. He added, “I would also note, $25,000 is 0.01%, roughly, of the city’s budget. And for that modest amount money, to the extent that that helps make the city work better and run better on probably a one-time basis, I think that’s a rather modest charge for us to accept.”
In the end, Cadena motioned that Council conduct City Manager evaluations on their own rather than hiring a third-party evaluator. In a 5-3 vote, the motion passed.
Votes in favor; Councilors Briae Lewis, Jan Napack, Moorefield, Mayers and Cadena.
Votes against; Councilors Alison Bowden, Ellis and Shaffer. Ward 4 Councilor Ava Olson was absent.
Next month, Cadena will submit a proposed City Manager evaluation procedures for discussion, and possible approval.
Our analysis
This is our analysis. At Monday’s meeting, nobody discussed the subtext. Undeniably, Councilor Ellis and City Manager Shepard have a history, and some on the council and in the community had begun to see the idea of an outside evaluation of Shepard as a form of political payback.
Some will recall that in late 2023, high ranking city officials said Ellis had violated the City Charter and had therefore forfeited her councillorship. Most folks assumed it was Shepard that got that ball rolling. Probably a good guess, but nobody really knows, the complaint against Ellis was filed anonymously.
So, what was the supposed violation, and before we tell you that, we should say, Ellis violated nothing.
What Ellis did was this. She asked the City Council to ask the City Manager to hire someone, anyone really, to please work as a support staffer for Corvallis’ Climate Action Advisory Board, or CAAB. The Council instead directed the City Manager to make sure CAAB had the support it needed, whether he hired someone, or used existing staff, or a temp, or whatever he wanted. Ellis was happy enough with that.
Matter handled? Nope. Some weeks later a committee made of the Mayor, City Manager, and now replaced City Attorney, and also now replaced City Council President and Vice-president cried foul because they had decided that Ellis’ actions were an attempt to coerce the city manager to make a hire, and that would have, of course, been a City Charter no-no.
At the time, all of us in local media reviewed the City’s evidence alongside the language of the Charter and came to the same conclusion – Ellis, like we said, hadn’t violated anything.
Eventually, seventeen former city councilors and a former mayor issued an open letter saying the same thing.
To most folks it looked like Ellis was just being a City Councilor, and had acted, well, councilor-ish. So, questions swirled over the City leadership’s motivations. The scuttlebutt was that Ellis could be… well… a little strident, and that she’d rankled just a few too many colleagues over the years.
In the end, Ellis filed a federal lawsuit to put a stop to this whole thing – and while awaiting judgement she also ran for another term. She was already reasonably popular with voters, and the City’s actions had the effect of skyrocketing that popularity even more, so she wound up running unopposed.
Now serving her fifth term, she has said in an open Council meeting that she does not plan to seek a sixth.
Our opinion
This is our opinion. Corvallis’ City Councilors at present appear fully capable of evaluating City Manager Mark Shepard’s job performance on their own.
There is no real proof that payback had somehow motivated efforts to have Shepard’s job performance reviewed by a third-party. Likewise, there’s no evidence that Shepard started the ball rolling to have Ellis ousted. But we accept that both those things could be true.
We also don’t care. The City is facing unprecedented pending budget shortfalls. There are infrastructure deficits. And increasingly, Corvallis, like many other municipalities, is trying to stem the local impacts of national and even international social and economic ills.
So, our point is this. This City needs both Ellis and Shepard focused on the community, and nothing else.
Ellis’ observations during Council meetings are often among the most practical and prescient while she also maintains a sense of vision that is aspirational.
Shepard can be seen as pulling a rabbit out of a hat every day, Corvallis functions better as City than it should given all the challenges it faces. It is little wonder the League of Oregon Cities named Shepard the top city employee in the whole freaking state last year.
Both Ellis and Shepard are invaluable threads in the tapestry that makes Corvallis work. They are very different from one another, and on any given day they may variously inspire or drive one nuts, but on balance, we think that adds to their value.
By Mike Suarez, Hallie Greenberg, and Steven J. Schultz
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