By Andy Sevilla.
Stemming from the months-long proceedings that ultimately removed and replaced Municipal Court Judge Sundra Spears, the council has agreed to take another look at how they manage the city’s appointed positions.
“It’s inconceivable that we do not know how to manage ourselves,” Councilman Chad Benninghoff told council members during deliberation. “Mayor Pro Tem (Samantha LeMense) and I are the only folks in our first term (in elected office) – everyone else is in their second term or longer – and we’ve already failed this council. And I think that’s all I have to say, we’ve already failed.”
Benninghoff’s off-the-cuff remarks came after LeMense and Councilwoman Diane Hervol voiced opposition to using Texas State University professors to help design a performance evaluation system for the council’s three appointed positions – city manager, city attorney and municipal court judge.
Hervol said the council is tasked with evaluating its appointed positions, per the city charter, and if more oversight was needed, then council could “fine-tune” their rules and make adjustments to allow for quarterly reviews of their high-ranking staff, as opposed to annual reviews, as is the case now.
“I’m not opposed to further education when needed,” Hervol said. “I think we have a huge amount of experience on this council currently. And just based on the numbers of terms several of my fellow council members have served, for me it seems inconceivable that we would not know what we were doing.”
Including 2014, the council has about 38 years of combined elected service among their members.
Mayor Lucy Johnson, however, countered that the university professors’ proposal offered more than just a focus to council’s relationship with the three positions. She said the experts would help with goal setting, team building and focusing in on a council retreat.
“I think it adds a level of professionalism and professional expertise on management that sometimes we lack as council members,” Johnson said.
Hervol, still, maintained that council already has an annual retreat where they set goals, practice team building and plan priorities for the year. She said the redundancy was unnecessary, especially at a cost of $4,500.
Texas State professors Jayce Farmer, Ph.D. and Thomas Longoria, Ph.D. submitted to the city a consulting proposal to develop policies and practices that ensure a high performance professional relationship between council and its direct appointees.
“Quality organizations do professional development and education,” said Councilman David Wilson. Right now “… there’s no real process (for evaluation), so I think should we not move forward tonight, we’ll be shorting ourselves.”
And though Johnson agreed that further education would benefit the council, she took issue with having an official say the council has failed, and then having a second official say the council doesn’t have a process to evaluate its appointees.
“There’s a huge difference between the idea or feeling like we failed in our duties, and ‘hey this is a good proposal.’ We can always improve.” Johnson told the Hays Free Press. “… I do think it’s ridiculous to say we don’t have a process or that we failed. We do have a process – and I should say that process wasn’t developed by any specific council alone, it’s been worked on over the years – … and I think it works well, but as I said before, there’s always room for improvement.”
Johnson also made it a point to say during the meeting that although Wilson said the city has no process for evaluation, he has helped develop the evaluation process presently in place used to gauge the council appointees.
LeMense took a different tact and advanced City Manager Lanny Lambert’s plan to have a subcommittee of three council members evaluate the appointees quarterly and report the results back to council, and then have an annual review of the positions by the whole council.
“I just would really hate to spend the tax dollars on something that we could fix ourselves,” LeMense said. Councilman Ray Bryant also was against spending money on an issue that could be fixed in-house.
But, Hervol also was against subcommittees evaluating staff.
“For me, the supervision of these three positions is our responsibility, every last council member’s responsibility,” Hervol said. “I’m not willing to give my proxy to any other council member. I’m willing to do this responsibility on my own. I took the oath of office to uphold the charter – and that’s what it says in the charter – and that’s what I intend to do.”
Ultimately, in a 4-2 split vote, the council accepted the university professors’ proposal. Hervol and Bryant dissented the plan, and Selbera was absent. Though some of the preparation work can be started now, the council decided to begin the goal setting, team building and design of performance evaluation after the May 10 city elections, where potentially four new council members could join the fray.
