At last week’s meeting, Council voted to give City Manager Chris Hladick a one-time, 5 percent bonus. 
He oversaw numerous major projects last year and by all accounts did a good job.  So, it would seem like a relatively uncontroversial move to reward him for his good work.

But it turns out that for at least one Councilor, it isn’t.    

Zac Schasteen was elected to City Council two years ago.  He isn’t known for taking a hard-line on any particular issue.  But during the last two meetings, he’s been outspoken about what he sees as Council violations of proper procedure.

During the November 8 Council meeting, he refused to authorize travel funds for Mayor Shirley Marquardt, saying that her request violated the Council’s travel policy.  During the November 22 meeting, he was the only dissenting vote on the question of whether to give the City Manager a bonus. 

In both cases, he insists that he doesn’t have a problem with the proposals themselves, but rather with how they were presented to the public.  Here he’s talking about the 5 percent bonus. 

“What we saw was a lack of transparency and a lack of public input.  And we basically opened the door for people to say that Council is playing fast and loose with City funds.  And that’s my concern.”

Last week Council did their annual evaluation of the City Manager during executive session, as noticed on the agenda.  Afterwards they came out of executive session into open meeting and voted 4-1 to give Hladick a one-time bonus. 

Schasteen says because that motion wasn’t on the agenda and because no members of the public were present for the vote, it should be nullified.

“It wasn’t noticed to the public.  Before we went into executive session, the public didn’t know we were going to come out and give a 5 percent bonus.  Now, whether any public wanted to speak up on it or not, I don’t know.  Because they weren’t noticed about it.”

Councilor Dave Gregory says he thinks having the City Manager evaluation on the agenda was enough notice.

“I just kind of assumed that it was just normal practice that after the evaluation was done [since he] got a really good evaluation that we would talk about extra compensation for doing a great job.  So yeah, I don’t see it as a problem.”

Schasteen isn’t satisfied though. 

“When we do have appropriations or budget amendments come before us, as we do on a regular basis, it’s specified where that money is coming from and where it is going to go. So the idea that the City is going to have the latitude to go into whatever fund they see fit and take that money out, I don’t know if I necessarily agree with.”

Even so, Shasteen admits his inquiry is a little in the weeds.

“A lot of people are going to say this is nit-picky.  But there’s the old saying ‘the devil’s in the details’.  If this is going to happen with $7500, what else will it happen to?  What other scenarios will be dismissed as no big deal?”

Councilor Dave Gregory says that while he doesn’t agree with Schasteen that anything was done incorrectly, he thinks the questions are valuable.

“If somebody has a question about it, that certainly needs to be addressed.  If Zac’s got a question about how things go, we should certainly listen to him and he should feel comfortable in getting answers to those questions that he has.”

Gregory added that ultimately, it comes down to whether the public that elected Council thinks things were sufficiently transparent.  Either way, it’s certainly sparked a discussion.