Mayor Byron Champlin has backed off his ruling that a Concord city councilor has a financial conflict of interest precluding her from fairly evaluating the city manager.
“Too many people in the public seemed to think my actions were politically motivated, when they were not,” Champlin said in a statement to the Monitor. He declined to be interviewed about his change of course.
Champlin emailed Stacey Brown of Ward 5 on Monday afternoon, stating that he was rescinding his decision determining that her husband’s employment as a city police officer meant she ought not to evaluate City Manager Tom Aspell, who oversees all city employees.
The mayor still feels Brown has a conflict, he wrote in his statement, “however, ongoing drama at City Council does not serve the interests of the public for good governance, and that drove my decision.”
Under city rules, any member of the council can raise a potential conflict of interest by another. The mayor can make a ruling — which he argued he was able to do outside of a city meeting — and the council has a whole, convened together, can vote to have the final say. Brown’s potential conflict wasn’t discussed at Monday’s city council meeting.
In response to Champlin’s decision, multiple city councilors said they could not separate the mayor’s decision from Brown’s simmering hostility with other members of the council and city staff, while another backed the mayor.
Brown’s reaction to Champlin’s reversal was that she was confident she would have been able to participate.
“It drew more attention to his poor decision than anything else,” she said.
The council evaluates the city manager each year in a closed-door session, which is followed by a vote on his pay for the following year. The council oversees city operations through its supervision of the manager, and Brown has participated in his review since she was first elected. Some councilors have said they want to see more structure and transparency in the process.
The evaluation is supposed to happen in April, per the city charter, but that hasn’t been the council’s practice. Champlin said he intends for Aspell’s evaluation to be completed by the end of this month.
The council begins its consideration of the city budget Thursday night. The proposal from Aspell calls for an 8% increase in operational spending and a 5.5% increase in the tax rate.
Aspell and his office will make an initial presentation Thursday, with workshops on public safety, capital projects and other areas of spending to follow in the ensuing weeks. A full schedule is available on the city website. While a formal hearing is only listed for the final workshop, city leaders have said they will take input from the public at meetings throughout the budget process.
