You need a little bit of both (efficiency and oversight). The council should be a check and balance and a watch dog over the city as a whole. There are multiple people with different talents. What I don’t see, someone else will. Having five individuals keeping watch adds to the integrity of the city. Having a balance also promotes efficiency. Spending too much in one area can cost you in another so scrutiny can promote efficiency and facilitate in keeping the goals of the city as established in strategic planning sessions. The oversight, scrutiny and input of the council creates efficiency.
I feel we could have scrutinized Larry Hansen’s (city administrator) contract better and negotiated better terms for the city. It was too one-sided. I voted in favor of it because of who he is, what he has done for the city and the potential impact he has on the city with sales tax redistribution. His input is critical. I put a name and face with the contract, but if this was before the council again, I would have negotiated and made him give a concession. People say you just go along, but I try not to do that. I’m trying to lure and keep good people. They need to be rewarded, but sometimes I question whether I scrutinized enough.
We can get ourselves lost in details. You can analyze and overanalyze and scrutinize more and more all the time. I try to be open minded. I look at the details as they are presented. Overall I think we scrutinize things pretty well. On a case-by-case basis we could do better, but the city is being run well and overall I think the council is doing a pretty fair job.
In regards to the renegotiation of the city administrators contract, I can understand that it can be difficult to separate the person from the position, but that is what you have to do when negotiating. The contract was set up specifically so that it would terminate after the mayor and council had gone through another election so that if there was turnover that the new people would have the opportunity for a fresh look at what direction they wanted to go as far as a new administrator or retain the current one. Turnover in that position is traditionally (in general not Riverdale specifically) is fairly high because the position works at the total discretion of the Mayor and Council and those people turnover fairly regularly. This is WHY the position normally has an employment contract.
ReplyDeleteMr. Hansen was coming in early to renegotiate and extend the term of the contract and one of the biggest things being negotiated was the term of the contract. This new contract will expire in December 31, rather than June 30. The timing seems to be accommodating Mr. Hansen's specific request that it extend to the specific time when he will retire.
I have no particular angst with that extension except that it was being asked for early, for an unusual term and offered the city no concession for the request. The terms of the contract as you and others noted in the discussions is very, very generous and there was an opportunity to reign in some of that excessive generosity through this request to renegotiate and the majority of the council, you included, abdicated that opportunity.
There was absolutely not negotiation at all. Larry asked for what HE wanted and the council gave him ever thing he asked for. He gave no concession in his asking either. I don't blame him for that, if I were renegotiating a contract, I would ask for everything I wanted as well. But as a city councilmember, it was your responsibility to the city to at least attempt to ask for concessions in the negotiation.
He was still under contract for another year so there was not much chance that he would leave, especially with the fact that he was asking for an extension specifically until his expected retirement date. He has done a good job for the city and I expect that he will continue to do a good job but if you think the contract is too generous and you have an opportunity to renegotiate the terms, you should have taken that opportunity.
And you do realize that he will now be leaving prior to the time that the sunset provisions would be up for renewal so he probably won't be of much assistance to the city in lobbying for that.
Stacey Haws
Stacey.Haws at yahoo.com