Midterm review panel urges clearer roles, more meetings and new ethics rules for Watertown council-manager system

Kyle Lallam, chair of the Home Rule Charter Midterm Review Commission, presented the commission’s findings to the City of Watertown City Council on April 7, 2025, after a review of staff surveys, interviews and outside interviews with municipal leaders.

The commission recommended stronger role clarity and communications among the three points of local governance — the council, the city manager and department heads — and urged formal steps including a council code of ethics, a “what to expect if elected” packet for candidates, an annual council orientation, quarterly budget reviews and a “serious concerns” reporting hotline to improve accountability.

The panel’s report summarized surveys with a 95% response rate from department heads and managers and roughly a 30% response rate from rank-and-file staff; the packet attached to the council agenda included redacted results. Lallam said staff satisfaction with current positions was high in the survey (86.7% reporting satisfied or extremely satisfied) and that 50% of respondents answered “yes, absolutely” when asked whether the council-manager form should continue; 34.8% said more time was needed to judge the change.

“We did have a truncated timeline. We did not reach out to the public,” Lallam told the council, adding the commission’s goal was to identify what is working and what can be improved under the Home Rule Charter adopted in 2019. He said the commission spoke with former and current local managers and the South Dakota Supreme Court’s retired chief justice to inform recommendations.

Major near-term recommendations include: • Adopt a city council code of ethics and require members to sign it before taking office. • Produce a “what to expect if elected” packet to be distributed by Human Resources to prospective candidates, describing roles, responsibilities and processes under the charter. • Institute four meetings per month (two work sessions and two council sessions) so policy discussion occurs in work sessions with no action taken, and final action is taken at shorter council sessions after staff research is complete. • Require quarterly council review of budget-to-actual results so governing decisions include up-to-date fiscal information. • Establish a “serious concerns” hotline routed to the mayor and HR to ensure confidential reporting about any level of the triangle (mayor/council, city manager, department heads). • Have HR initiate an annual city manager performance evaluation and consider a 6-month check-in for newly hired managers.

Lallam said the commission deliberately redacted staff responses when sharing findings with council and the hiring committee to protect anonymity and to encourage frank answers. “Our promise and commitment to the staff and department heads…was to redact any information that would be identifiers so that they could give a true and transparent response,” he said.

Council members used the presentation and Q&A to press for clarification on a few points: whether the commission had considered changing the charter’s threshold for hiring or firing a city manager (the commission said no — rewriting the charter is not its charge), and whether mayoral participation on the Watertown Development Company (WDC) board would be appropriate (Lallam said the mayor’s economic-development duties argued for an ex officio role).

The commission also urged annual team-building and strategic-planning sessions that include council, the city manager, department heads and outside local partners to align priorities and reduce surprises at action meetings.

The council did not vote to adopt the recommendations as a single package during the April 7 meeting; several council members said they would review the written findings and consider the proposals, and the panel offered to return for a focused council session to discuss redacted specifics.

Why this matters: Watertown voters adopted the council-manager form of government by a large margin in 2019. The midterm review aims to improve how the form works in practice — clarifying lines of authority, strengthening accountability, and giving newly elected officials clearer orientation — to reduce operational friction and to help the next city manager succeed.

The commission’s full redacted findings and the staff survey attachments were filed with the April 7 council agenda for public review.