City Manager Headlines | 4-10-2024
CA: Third Orange County City Leaves California League of Cities
The fallout continues over the league’s endorsement of Proposition 1. The measure barely passed and many fear it will allow unregulated drug treatment homes in neighborhoods. The City of Orange voted to leave immediately if they can get their annual dues refunded, and if not, to exit upon the next renewal date.
A competing advocacy group known as the Association of California Cities – Orange County was created back in 2011 to send a message of dissatisfaction to the state organization.
CO: A Colorado ski town can’t fill a job with a $167,000 salary because potential candidates can’t afford to live there
“Houses used to be for employees and hotels for guests. Now houses are for guests and hotels are for employee housing,” Loryn Duke, the communications director at the Steamboat Ski Resort, told the outlet.
ME: Southern Maine sees a new wave of town managers
With a wave of retirements by longtime town managers, at least four towns and a city in southern Maine have welcomed new faces in recent weeks and months.
As the job has gotten more challenging and the labor market more constrained, many municipalities have waived the requirement that the manager be a resident.
ME: Limestone Select Board wants to increase town manager’s salary
Wanna guess how much they are paying the current manager? Guess higher!
To be fair, it’s tough to pay a decent salary to your manager when you are a town of only 1,500 people.
OH: Vendor link another factor that led to firing of North Canton’s city administrator
Two officials told Mayor Stephan Wilder that it appeared their then-boss, City Administrator Patrick DeOrio, was inappropriately trying to help a client of his private financial advisory business get a contract providing software to the city. DeOrio maintains that: “No laws were broken. No ethics were violated.”
MI: Former state employee convicted for ‘rampant and flagrant misuse’ of state vehicles
Story concerns a state employee — but you don’t want one of these headlines about one of your employees hitting the front page of the local paper.
Also, the Michigan Attorney General makes it sound like they are really sending a message to would-be wrong-doers when if you read the story it is almost like the guy was caught on accident.
MA: Rental Registry Program comes back to Worcester City Council for third week
Stop me if you have heard this one before.
Council unanimously passed an ordinance or program. And then when it is implemented and people start complaining they get all spun up and tell the city manager to “fix it.”
NY: Saratoga Springs settles discrimination lawsuit with former employee
Mayor John Safford said the city was told by its former insurance company Travelers that it would be settling the case.
Travelers ended its coverage with the city at the end of last year stating that the city’s “approach to risk and safety management creates an unacceptable increase in the hazards contemplated for the city.”
MN: Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey joins business, disability and senior advocates to urge reversal of Minneapolis’ Uber, Lyft vote
With Uber and Lyft threatening to pull out of Minneapolis if an ordinance raising drivers’ pay takes effect May 1, a coalition of groups representing the city’s elderly residents, people with disabilities, the hospitality industry and the airport joined Mayor Jacob Frey on Monday to urge City Council members to step back from the “cliff.”
Back in 2016, Uber and Lyft pulled out of Austin. Axios has a story up today titled: What Minneapolis can learn from Uber and Lyft’s year-long exit in Austin, Texas.
British Columbia, Canada: Kamloops council reverses mayor’s suspension of CAO
The petty mayor placed a 25-year employee who was stepping up to help the city as an interim manager on leave for no reason last week. We discussed it on LinkedIn. Now, the governing body has overridden the mayor.
“It’s a very serious matter. You’re dealing with someone’s livelihood here. They have family. They got a reputation,” said Councilmember Bill Sarai.
