Posted by Irvine Sign Company
Posted by Irvine Business Sign Company
In the past few years, January has been the cruelest month for city managers in Santa Ana, with the last two men to hold the job let go early in 2017 and 2019.
Now the city is dealing with vacancies in several top administrative posts: Jorge Garcia, assistant to the city manager, left in November; Deputy City Manager Robert Cortez departed in mid-December; and in the past two weeks, City Clerk Maria Huizar resigned and City Manager Raul Godinez II was dismissed by the council. Godinez could not be reached for comment.
Cortez, Garcia and Huizar left Santa Ana for jobs with other agencies, but Santa Ana’s track record with keeping city managers has been spotty in recent years.
David Cavazos was city manager from August 2013 to January 2017, when he was let go; his predecessor, Paul Walters, barely held the job nine months.
On his retirement in 2011, former city manager David Ream had run Santa Ana for 25 years. But since then, no manager has had council support for long. Including interim and acting city managers – filling the job while officials sought a permanent hire – six different people have been at the city’s helm in as many years.
Economic Development Director Steven Mendoza is now serving as acting city manager in the interim, but the council has not said when or how it plans to hire someone permanently.
“We are working as quickly as we can to fill those positions,” said Councilman Juan Villegas, who voted with the majority to grant Godinez the large severance package his contract promised.
Villegas said the acting city manager is doing a good job and department heads have stepped up to help share the load. “Everything will work out.”
Why do council members seem unable to find a top executive they are satisfied with, and what effect can such frequent change have on a city?
The answer to the first question may depend on whom you ask.
Villegas said the city “needed to go in a different direction, and to do so we needed different leadership.” He declined to comment on Godinez’s job performance.
Councilman Vicente Sarmiento said he didn’t support firing Godinez and that it’s more a reflection of changes on the council – three new members were elected in November – than anything the former city manager did.
But Councilwoman Cecilia Iglesias, who took office in December, said she didn’t get a chance to evaluate Godinez because the suggestion to terminate his employment initially came up at her first meeting.
“It was very sudden. I hadn’t heard anything negative about him in the community,” she said. “I know a lot of community members were very frustrated, too, because there’s no stability.”
That lack of continuity is one potential side effect of a city management revolving door, said Ken Pulskamp, who heads the California City Management Foundation and was formerly a city manager himself.
Although city managers know they work for the council and can be let go any time, when there’s a lot of high-level turnover, he said, “It just creates a lot of uncertainty in the organization and in the community, and it even impacts a council’s ability to go out and recruit and hire a subsequent city manager.”
Other employees may worry about their own job security, or drag their feet on projects or orders they don’t like, hoping to wait out the current executive, Pulskamp said.
Finally, because they’re at-will employees, most cities offer their managers generous severance packages in the event they’re fired, and dismissing executives frequently can get expensive, Pulskamp said.
Godinez had a clause in his contract to protect his job in the months before and after city elections, but the council majority waived it and voted to pay him a year’s salary and benefits as promised, which totaled $394,586. A city spokeswoman did not return calls as to whether he also received a payout of unused leave time.
Cavazos, too, received a six-figure severance package when he and the council parted ways in 2017.
Iglesias questioned the cost of Godinez’s severance at the Jan. 15 meeting, when the council voted to pay it, and in an interview she said that’s not her only fiscal concern.
Godinez was the highest-paid manager in city history when he was hired. Iglesias expects his replacement will want more money to offset the lack of job security.
“And who gets stuck with the bill? It’s us, the community,” she said.
It’s also an example of the myriad ways the city seems to fritter away its money, she said, noting that voters just approved a sales tax increase to pay for basic city services.
Villegas and Sarmiento said they don’t believe the city will have trouble finding quality candidates for its top job, considering Santa Ana is one of the state’s largest cities in the center of an affluent county and with demographically younger residents.
Once candidates are recruited, Iglesias said she wants to bring residents into the process, perhaps with a community panel that could interview finalists or through some other way of getting their input that could help the council make the best choice for the city.
“Unfortunately it’s very political,” she said, “and I believe that’s where the community needs to have more of a say.”
[Read More ...]
Posted by Irvine Sign Maker
For Free Sign Estimate Visit: Lighted Channel Letters Irvine ca
Posted by https://goo.gl/TXzGV5
No comments:
Post a Comment