To Michele Horne, the mayor’s decision that fellow city councilor Stacey Brown has a conflict of interest precluding her from evaluating the performance of the city manager doesn’t pass muster.
“Neither Councilor Brown nor her husband would benefit financially from her being a participant in a city manager’s evaluation,” Horne said.
Nor does the Ward 2 councilor buy Mayor Byron Champlin’s statement that his decision to bar her from the evaluation has nothing to do with politics.
“I think that he has a contentious relationship with Councilor Brown,” Horne said, which leads him to make different decisions with her than he would with other councilors.
Champlin determined that because Brown’s husband is a city police officer, she has a conflict of interest in evaluating the city manager. He sees a chain of command issue where Brown oversees her husband’s boss, and that the issue could become a financial conflict if Brown’s husband were to seek a promotion.
In Horne’s view, though, that determination makes the city appear unprofessional.
“It’s reflecting poorly on us,” Horne added. “It’s assuming that our city manager would be retaliatory against a city staff person should he get a poor review – or be more generous with a city staff person should he get a better review.”
Aspell has declined to comment.
The council gives an annual performance review to the manager, the city’s chief executive, and then they set his pay for next year. He currently earns about $250,000 a year and has insisted that any evaluation of his performance be withheld from the public. Brown has participated in this review since she joined the council, but this year the mayor said he realized a potential conflict of interest.
Champlin’s decision is preliminary, and it’s likely the council will hold a vote on whether Brown has a conflict at its Monday meeting. Currently, they’re divided.
Jennifer Kretovic, the Ward 3 councilor, aligns with Champlin.
Noting that the manager is currently in the search process for a new police chief, Kretovic said, “essentially, the city manager is in the process of hiring her husband’s boss.”
“From my perspective, I think that this is making so much out of something that is really nothing,” Kretovic continued. “I think that she’s always had a conflict of interest, and I’m not sure that she appreciated when [former] Mayor Bouley allowed her to participate in a conversation.”
Ward 6 Councilor Aislinn Kalob said she has mixed feelings about Brown but couldn’t separate the mayor’s ruling from the ongoing animosity between Brown and some other councilors.
“I think there’s a little bit of bending over backward to exclude her from things,” Kalob said. “I really think it’s a bad look for the council and the mayor.”
Earlier this year, Brown was removed from some of her committee assignments and was told by Aspell that any questions she had about city operations must go directly through him.
Like Horne, Kalob doesn’t think Brown has a conflict of interest in the matter. Neither does Mark Davie of Ward 4, the other new councilor at the table this year.
“I don’t agree with it,” Davie said. “I think she’s been here for two terms and I don’t know why suddenly it’s changing.”
To Kalob, whether or not Brown has a conflict is not the most important issue with the evaluation this year.
“There are cities that have chosen to value transparency in the manager review process,” Kalob said. “If we wanted to, we would, and we don’t.”
Kalob said she agrees with the evaluation taking place in a non-public session, but would like, at a minimum, to give the public clarity about the standards he is measured against.
“I feel the public deserves to at least know what the evaluation looks like,” she said.
Horne agrees. She also feels the evaluation needs to be more structured.
Last year, several councilors, including Brown and Horne, said they wanted a review of the evaluation process to see if it could be more comprehensive and detailed.
Horne described the current process as “willy nilly” and based on personal opinions about the manager. To her knowledge, she said, it hasn’t changed.
The city has declined requests from the Monitor for a copy of previous evaluations and for a blank version of the evaluation criteria.
“Even if we’re discussing his actual evaluation in private, there should be a comprehensive process that we’re going through that the public knows,” Horne said. “So at least you know how we’re going about it.”
Kretovic disagrees.
“From an HR standpoint, I do not see how the performance evaluation and any of the results of it should be public for any person that is an employee in any organization,” Kretovic said. “That’s just not how it works.”
Other communities in New Hampshire, including Keene, Salem, Laconia and Durham, make the evaluations of their chief executive public.
After being told she couldn’t partake in Aspell’s evaluation, Brown released her own assessment publicly on social media and gave a copy to the city clerk to be given to the rest of the council. It was entirely negative.
Brown said Aspell demonstrates “weak financial oversight, excessive compensation, and reactive rather than strategic fiscal planning. The end result is that Concord taxpayers are now faced with an almost unsustainable tax burden.”
In Concord, the manager’s evaluation is supposed to occur in April, though it typically occurs later in the year. This year, Champlin said he expects it to occur by the end of May.
While the council may take up a vote on the issue of Brown’s potential conflict, there is no opportunity for residents to make a public comment on that issue or on the manager’s evaluation more broadly. At the discretion of the mayor, city council meetings provide no opportunity for general public comments, only feedback during public hearings on specific issues.
At Monday night’s meeting, the council will hold hearings on a handful of zoning tweaks. Notably, they would lower some requirements on duplexes, bringing them into alignment with the requirements for properties with accessory dwelling units, and make it easier to convert nonresidential buildings into housing.
Another hearing will surround proposed increases to many city fees, from the costs to rent fields and community rooms to dog licenses to purple trash bags.
Finally, councilors will hold a hearing on whether to move forward with the next stage of the Merrimack River Greenway Trail Project. The full agenda is available on the city website.
