Ray Mariano: City Council drops ball in evaluating city manager
Outside of the actual selection of a city manager, one of the most important things that the Worcester City Council does is the annual evaluation of the incumbent city manager. The reason is simple: The city manager holds all of the city’s executive authority and the City Council can’t do much without his or her help.
Whatever a city council wants to accomplish - more police protection, more street repair, more investment in the school system - it needs the city manager to get anything done.
So, you would think that the current City Council would do all that it could to make the most of the evaluation process and give the city manager clear direction as to what they expect from him. You would think that and you would be wrong.
The recent evaluation of the city manager was an embarrassment. Rather than evaluate the manager and then set clear goals and objectives against which he will be measured, the council provided no clear direction and fumbled the actual evaluation itself.
The process was so bad that one city councilor didn’t even bother to fill out the evaluation form. Others only wrote a few words or letters on the form with absolutely no detail. When it was over, the city manager was given no direction as to what the council collectively wanted done.
He’s not Ed Augustus Jr.
When the City Council hired Ed Augustus Jr., it hired a veteran politician and political operative. In simple language, Augustus was a political heavyweight. And that’s exactly how the City Council treated him.
When Augustus did something right he was praised to the heavens. And when he dropped the ball or dragged his feet, any criticism was muted. For example, the council wanted body cameras but said very little while the manager waited an eternity to implement what other communities had done long before.
In fact, the council almost never gave Augustus much in the way of direction. It let him chart the city’s course and then sat on the sidelines and nodded approvingly.
But Eric Batista is no Ed Augustus Jr. For all his administrative talent, Batista is a political novice. Batista worked his way up the administrative ranks and whether you like the process used to hire him or not, he was certainly qualified to become city manager when Augustus left.
However, Batista has no political standing - no political connections and no political base of support. Consequently, councilors can chirp and complain when they don’t get their individual way. They would never have done that to Augustus - and they almost never did.
No clear goals and objectives
But the biggest problem with the council’s evaluation of the city manager is that it really didn’t evaluate him at all - at least not in a way that was productive.
Councilor-at-Large Thu Nguyen has a number of things that they want done. So what? Councilor-at-Large Khrystian King wants a gentrification mitigation plan. Again, so what? Councilor George Russell wants more attention paid to the 311 system and a faster response to litter complaints. How nice.
None of that matters when it only comes from an individual city councilor. For any of these requests to be taken seriously, the City Council needs to prepare a comprehensive and prioritized list of goals and objectives for the manager with timelines - as a group. Not as individual councilors.
Unfortunately, the City Council is either too lazy or hapless to do that. And since the manager can’t do everything at once, he’s left wondering what he should prioritize and what he should leave for another day.
That means that any councilor is free to whack away at Batista for not doing what he or she individually thinks is important.
Here’s a question to ask yourself: What are the priorities of the City Council? I’m not sure anyone really knows and that includes members of the City Council. And if they don’t know, where does that leave the city manager?
Councilors typically say that they’re in favor of everything - better streets, more attention to the neighborhoods, more police protection but not too much, less litter and a partridge in a pear tree. But ask them to prioritize what they want and put it on a list and they can’t be bothered. They can’t be bothered because then they can’t be for everything and that doesn’t look good come election time.
Just imagine that the City Council actually did its job - I know it’s hard to imagine but try. In the area of new development, imagine that the council said its very top priority was that the manager finds something to do with the decaying former Big D supermarket building on Mill Street. How long do you think it would take for him to get something going? I’d bet that by the next evaluation period he would have something for the council to look at - probably sooner. But as it stands now, it’s really only a priority for the district councilor.
Eric Batista started the job as Worcester’s city manager without direction from the City Council - without specific goals and objectives. And he was evaluated based on individual councilors' agendas. Without the political legs to keep the council at bay, of course he was going to receive some criticism.
Now Batista is moving forward for his second year rudderless and without clear direction from his bosses. He deserves better and so does Worcester.
But the city manager’s evaluation does tell us one thing: Worcester needs a few new city councilors.
Email Raymond V. Mariano at rmariano.telegram@gmail.com. He served four terms as mayor of Worcester and previously served on the City Council and School Committee. He grew up in Great Brook Valley and holds degrees from Worcester State College and Clark University. He was most recently executive director of the Worcester Housing Authority. His column appears weekly in the Sunday Telegram.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Ray Mariano column on Worcester City Council evaluating city manager
