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Councilors outline priorities for city manager evaluation; plan follow-up to craft rubric
Summary
Scappoose councilors on Aug. 4 outlined core functional areas for the city manager’s evaluation — including finance, leadership, community and intergovernmental relations — and asked staff to draft a rubric combining quarterly check-ins, staff input and an annual appraisal.
During the Aug. 4 meeting’s work-session, Scappoose councilors discussed a draft approach to evaluating the city manager that would combine periodic check-ins, staff input and an annual appraisal tied to specific functional categories.
Councilors voiced agreement on core functional areas to assess, with recurring themes including budget and finance, leadership and personnel management, community relations, intergovernmental relations and council relations. Councilor Holmes emphasized the need to define success for each category and favored a system that includes both quantitative and qualitative feedback. Several councilors said staff input and an anonymous mechanism would be important to fairly evaluate the city manager’s personnel and management skills.
Councilor Haugen suggested including a confidential staff survey or union input and cited precedent in other public-sector evaluations; councilors and staff agreed to explore mechanisms for gathering meaningful staff perspectives. Council members also discussed rating scales: some preferred a simple three-level system (exceeds, meets, needs improvement) while others favored a five-point scale to give finer gradation. City Manager Ben Merkner said he was open to either approach.
The council directed staff leaders to consolidate the choices and return with a proposed rubric and definitions of each core area for further discussion, aiming to build a process that includes quarterly two-way meetings, a documented annual review and an expanded 360-degree feedback step after the rubric is finalized.
No formal policy changes were adopted; councilors tasked staff and a small council subset to draft a formal evaluation tool and a schedule for adoption.
