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Lowell council works to formalize annual evaluations for manager, auditor and clerk
Summary
At a May special meeting, Lowell City Council members and consultants from the Collins Center discussed creating a formal, data-informed evaluation tool for the city manager, city auditor and city clerk and agreed to collect individual council priorities by survey and refine them with a subcommittee.
Lowell — At a special May meeting, the Lowell City Council met with consultants from the Collins Center for Public Management and city HR staff to begin drafting a formal evaluation process and goal-setting tool for the city manager, the city auditor and the city clerk.
The Collins Center’s Mary Icardi told the council the meeting was intended as a working session to collect individual priorities that the consultants and a council subcommittee will collate into draft goals. “We’re here to help facilitate your process for setting goals and expectations using this formal system,” Icardi said.
The session focused on six performance categories the consultants provided as a starting point, and councilors used the time to discuss how those categories should be defined and measured. Margaret Arsault, a Collins Center associate, described the process the consultants planned to follow: gather council members’ priorities, return a consolidated draft to the subcommittee for refinement, then present a version for full-council review before finalizing it for the performance year.
Councilors suggested priorities and measurement approaches rather than specific SMART goals at the meeting. Suggestions included emphasizing proactive communication and quarterly check-ins between the manager and individual councilors, using 3-1-1 response data to measure operational performance, and adding measurable follow-through and implementation checks for policy objectives. “Having quarterly sessions … about how are we doing on our goals is a good suggestion,” a councilor said during the discussion.
Several councilors said they wanted the tool to produce clear expectations for the manager as the city’s chief executive while keeping the auditor and clerk evaluations slimmer and aligned with their statutory responsibilities. Councilors also discussed using job descriptions as a baseline for measurable objectives, and about combining overlapping categories such as leadership and council relationship under clearer, measurable headings.
The consultants proposed a practical exercise (post-it notes and categorization) to surface each council member’s top priorities during the meeting. Multiple councilors said they would prefer additional time and an online survey to provide more considered answers rather than being asked to write priorities on the spot.
As an immediate next step, the Collins Center agreed to distribute an online survey to capture council members’ priorities and to include a written summary of the meeting and the consultants’ proposed next steps. The consultants said they will return a consolidated draft to the council’s subcommittee for further refinement and then bring a refined draft back to the full council for consideration.
The council ended the special meeting after agreeing to the follow-up survey and subcommittee review. A motion to adjourn was made and the meeting was adjourned.
