Palo Alto CAO committee finalizes evaluation materials, sends timeline and prompts to council consent

The Palo Alto CAO Committee on May 12, 2025 reviewed a revised schedule, self‑evaluation prompts and interview questions for the fiscal 2024–25 performance reviews of council‑appointed officers and agreed to place the materials on the full City Council consent calendar for approval.

The discussion matters because the committee’s process will guide evaluations of the city manager, city attorney, city clerk and city auditor; shape any future compensation recommendations; and determine whether the reviews will include more objective performance measures (KPIs) and clearer documentation for public review.

Dan Rich, a consultant with Municipal Resources Group, told the committee he had proposed tightening the prompts and better aligning the CAO self‑evaluation questions with the interview questions he will ask council members. “The key objective here is really just not to have the process drag out too long,” Rich said, describing his goal of completing interviews by mid‑August if possible.

Committee members discussed scheduling at length. The draft timeline included an interview window of July 28–August 8, but several members said holding interviews after the council’s summer recess (the packet referenced early August return dates) would be more practical given heavy workload before the break and CAO scheduling constraints. The committee did not set a single fixed date but agreed the consultant and staff should finalize interview appointments with an aim to finish interviews in mid‑August and to build in some flexibility if calendars require slipping a few days.

Salary comparators were also addressed. Committee members agreed to narrow the long benchmark list used last year and to add Berkeley and San Mateo to the market‑comparison group; one member also suggested Mountain View as a relevant nearby comparator. The consultant cautioned that adding comparators increases the time and effort required to collect accurate pay data.

There was discussion about how the written consultant report will reflect council views. Rich said last year he synthesized roughly 39 pages of notes and “did not use a hard rubric” to decide what to include. He asked whether the committee wanted a stricter rule — for example, requiring a majority (four of seven) for a theme to be included — or whether some flexibility to capture widely shared but differently worded concerns was preferable. Council members generally agreed the report should emphasize majority views while allowing notation of minority perspectives when two or three members share them; several said a single outlier opinion should be handled carefully and could instead be raised during closed‑session discussion if warranted.

Public comment raised transparency concerns. A commenter identified as Herbie urged that council‑set goals, priorities and performance indicators be treated as identifiable public records and be available for public review before closed‑session evaluations. Herbie also said the Brown Act’s rules on what constitutes a “meeting” apply to both open and closed sessions and questioned whether off‑calendar individual interviews could run afoul of that law.

City Manager Ed Sherhaut told the committee he expects KPIs discussed in the CAO evaluations to align with organization‑level KPIs so departments are held to consistent measures. “We don’t want, for example, any department to be operating on one set of KPIs based upon my personality evaluation and another set based on citywide budget and council priorities,” Sherhaut said.

The city clerk, speaking in the meeting, said the self‑evaluation prompts were useful and asked that the process allow space for appointees to present accomplishments in context: “I definitely… took the opportunity to really express in my written evaluation, highlighting the accomplishments of myself and the department,” the clerk said, adding that written submissions should permit some narrative beyond tightly structured prompts.

Committee members asked that the consultant circulate finalized prompts and timeline to the full council as a consent item, as was done the previous year. With no formal motion recorded, the committee chair indicated the materials would be placed on the council consent calendar for review and approval.

The committee also requested that staff contact the two newly seated council members before the evaluation interviews to make sure they understand the process and to consider sharing supplemental materials again this year (citizen survey results, prior goals and organizational values) to provide evaluators context. The consultant said he would refine question wording where members recommended changes (for example, clarifying whether questions ask about a CAO’s own priorities or their assessment of organizational trends within their role) and would incorporate committee guidance on how results and any KPIs are documented.

The committee adjourned after agreeing to return the finalized timeline, prompts and interview questions to the full City Council as a consent item.