City Council Workshop

1. Pulic education and outreach. There's a web site with a construction guidance section.
2. Illicit discharge ordinance -- part of the Best Management Practices
3. ...

• Scope of services. CTS will participate end-to-end
• Role of staff, city council and CTS.
• How should CTS communicate with the city and the council? (Mayor thinks it should go thru the HR director, Ms Manor.
• Recruitment schedule:
  • Converse with people in town by July 1
  • Candidate profile completed by July 1
  • Draft ad and marketing material (brochure): July 5
  • Adjustments by July 8
  • Start advertising July 11
  • Final filing date August 19
  • Finalist Reports by August 26
  • Interviews September 5
  • Followup interview September 12
  • Select city manager September 19

  There was quite a bit of discussion on this. At what point should the council be involved? Workman wants to see the detail. Cole and Wells don't want to be involved until the end of the process. Ms Manor suggests that the council tonight give CTS the profile; but she's happy approving the advertisements. The brochure should be reviewed by each councilman independently.

  Should there be a public meeting(s) on the profile? Cole: yes, let's have an open meeting.. Mayor: no, let's get citizens involved after candidates are identified. Wells: In the past we have had a committee of citizens to interview candidates. Cole: People want to voice their opinion. An open meeting will better placate the current situation. Clark: the question is do we bring citizens in now and later or just later. CTS said they've done it both ways; town halls sometimes are less valuable because they are less focussed than direct interview; they can also do a web survey; when pressed, she said she didn't recommend a town-hall meeting and did recommend the council give her a list of people to talk to. Wells: I don't think the public has anything to contribute; the city charter says what the the duties of the city manager are and we just need to find the best person to carry them out. Mayor: I want citizens to help do the profile and talk to candidates.

  I think they ended up on a focus group to develop the profile, with each councilman providing two names.

  The council came up with a lot of good things to say about Killeen.

  Challenges:

  • Maintaining troop strength
  • Getting traffice to come her from I35
  • Attracting industry
  • Human relations
  • Crime rate
  • Fire protection coverage
  • No "theme".
  • Old Town is falling apart.

  City Manager priorities:

  • Maintain contact with key community leaders
  • Speak to community organizations -- be visible
  • Exude transparency and openness
  • Encourage Community Development
  • Work for the people
  • Think clearlty, make good decisions
  • Involve the executive management team, engage the executive staff
  • Handle growth
  • Build a new water treatment plant
  • Improve local transportation

  Skills and personal characteristics:

  • Good speaker, good communicator
  • Can work with military
  • Personable
  • Visionary
  • Work with diverse cultures
  • Decisive
  • Quick decision making skills
  • Understands the consequences of actions
  • Good listening skills
  • Ability to make and justify decisions that require thought.
  • Be able to satisfy seven bosses.
  • Receptive and perceptive.

  Experience and Knowledge:

  • Would like a PhD, but at least a masters.
  • Degree in some kind of public adminstrations, or other formal training.
  • Experience from a similar or larger size city that is growing.
  • Not necessarily someone who is already a city manager (Wells disagrees).
  • Financial knowledge

  How much money are we offering? Medium salary is $225,000 in Texas. We're probably in the 150-200K range per CTS. CTS suggests we use a standard contract, which usually has a 6 to 12-month severence. This sort of thing doesn't have to go in the recruitment material, though. We can say compensation is negotiable. CTS will do salary surveys.

  They'll be looking at towns of 75,000K up with city manager systems nation-wide. There will probably be 300-500 initial candidates.

This was not crisp, either on the part of CTS or of the city. The council doesn't seem to remember the earlier discussions and Ms Darby is wishy-washy. I blame staff: Ms Manor knows how much trouble this council has focusing, and she should have come in with a complete proposal for the council to approve or disapprove. I wish someone would make a motion that she be directed to do that.

With regard to the list of positives about Killeen, it was an extensive list but not without overstatement.

With regard to the list of challenges, I don't think anyone was trying very hard. No one mentioned deteriorating older areas of the city; traffic; lack of citizen involement; high transience; a stumbling city council; mistrust in government; bad drivers; ugly neighborhoods; ...

With regard to severence, if the CM is hired on an open-ended contract for services with annual review, does the city manager always get the severence if he is terminated? There's no way to say "At the end of this year we're going to hire someone new" without incurring the severence?