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Sweet Home council approves framework for stepped employee-evaluation process
Summary
At a council work session, members agreed to use a Silverton-derived evaluation for council review of the city manager, a pared-down Lebanon-style form for general staff, a fuller form for department directors, and a shorter, numbered form for the city attorney; staff will draft the surveys and return them for council approval.
Mayor Coleman and the Sweet Home City Council discussed and reached informal agreement on a multi-part employee evaluation process during a work session on the employee evaluation process.
The council agreed to use the City of Silverton’s evaluation template and five-point rating scale as the primary instrument for councilors' review of the city manager, adopt a shortened Lebanon-style questionnaire for general staff, and use the full Silverton-style detail for department directors. For the city attorney, the council favored a shorter Lebanon-format form with numerical ratings and the attorney’s job description attached.
City Attorney Larson, who presented background materials and sample templates, told the council “the only employees that the council directly appoints are the city manager, the city attorney, and the municipal court judge.” Larson warned that “those contracts may need to be modified in order to, accommodate that new evaluation process” if the council chooses additional evaluation elements tied to employment terms.
Councilor Richards said of the sample forms, “I do really like the 1 from Silverton.” Several councilors said they preferred collecting input from multiple stakeholders, including department directors and selected staff, while limiting the general public’s role to a separate, citywide “pulse” survey rather than a central element of the manager’s formal evaluation.
Councilors and staff discussed formats and logistics at length. Concerns raised included selection bias from an open community call for responses, the administration and anonymity of electronic surveys, and staff time required to collect and process responses. Larson recommended limiting some surveys to a selected sample and using third-party survey tools to preserve anonymity and validate respondents. Council discussion included the estimate that the city has about 70 staff members and that a full public mailing tied to water bills might produce many responses that would be difficult to vet for relevance to the manager’s direct performance.
On the question of community input, the council coalesced around two separate ideas: (1) include a short, easily tabulated citywide survey (for general sentiment about city services) that could be run periodically and (2) reserve more detailed evaluation input for people with direct interaction with the evaluated employee (department directors, certain committee chairs, court staff, law-enforcement personnel where relevant). Several councilors suggested offering a public meeting as an optional venue for verbal feedback rather than relying solely on a public open survey for the manager’s formal performance review.
The council also discussed timing and process. Members favored a process that includes a self-evaluation by the employee, concurrent submissions from councilors, aggregated numeric results and open-ended comments, and then a deliberation with the employee. City Attorney Larson advised that employees must be notified and have the option to ask for the evaluation to be discussed in public rather than in executive session; he summarized that the final evaluation could combine questionnaire results and the council’s subsequent deliberation with the employee.
Councilors asked staff to draft the proposed survey instruments and a recommended administration plan (including vendor options, sampling method and timeline) and return the drafts to the council for final review. Several councilors described the first run of the new process as a trial iteration to be adjusted after initial use.
Next steps: staff will prepare draft surveys and an implementation plan for council review; the council will use the Silverton template and five-point scale for council evaluations of the city manager, a shortened Lebanon-style form for general staff, the detailed Silverton headings for department directors, and a Lebanon-style numbered form for the city attorney with the job description attached. The council did not take a formal roll-call vote; the conclusions recorded in this article reflect the council’s stated consensus during the work session.
