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"Many of the systems are childish...for kindergarten that's OK"
Eric Sorensen
current Winona City Manager
As longtime Winona City Manager Eric Sorensen prepares for retirement in early 2011 after 23 years as the city’s top administrator, elected city leaders are preparing themselves: to find a procedure for his replacement, to update job descriptions and related materials, and to potentially produce a policy that would for the first time include formal performance reviews for the city’s highest paid employee.
Other city employees are reviewed by their supervisors on an annual basis, with the results forwarded to department heads and then to Sorensen himself. Sorensen, who has no supervisor save the City Council itself, has only faced casual feedback from council members over the years as a form of review. That, according to a query of similar-sized Minnesota cities, is unusual.
Winona Human Resources Coordinator Myrna Olson confirmed that Winona does not have a pay for performance system tied to annual employee reviews. Rather, raises are spelled out in contracts or negotiated by union groups, and Sorensen, to her memory as a longtime city employee, hasn’t requested higher pay increases than those granted to other employee groups over the years. “He doesn’t want more than anyone else,” she said.
Pay increases for city employees are given on a percentage basis. For Sorensen, that has meant a salary that has more than doubled over the last 22 years from a base salary of about $52,000 in 1987 to his current wage of $111,000, a $59,000 increase.
Much of that pay raise can be attributed to inflationary increases over his long tenure with the city. But alongside the discussion about whether to adopt a policy for formal review of Sorensen’s replacement, the council may also discuss whether such a review system should be tied to salary increases, a relationship represented in many other Minnesota municipalities.
Out of more than a dozen cities with similar populations questioned by the Winona Post last week on their own policies and procedures about top administrator reviews, only Fridley, with a population of 26,000, admitted it also did not review its city manager — also its highest paid employee.
If you ask Sorensen himself, annual reviews where an employee’s performance is rated on various goals and job functions is childish. “Many of the systems are childish, you know, the grading system. For kindergarten, that’s OK. But here, it’s serious, and continuous,” said Sorensen. “My relationship with the council is on a daily basis; I’m constantly getting requests and points of view.”
Sorensen said he is not protected by a union and is an at-will employee, so if City Council members are not happy with his performance, they can simply fire him. And as far as an annual review goes, he said that the more informal system of feedback in place now is a good fit for him. “The idea that once a year you sit down and talk and hold hands together, I think that misses the other 364 days in the year. I think [the system in place now is] the more businesslike approach to a position like mine.”
Many cities contacted by the Winona Post had either a formal policy in place to review its top administrator, while others did not have a policy on the books but did have a formal procedure in place for an annual review. The cities of Chaska (p. 24,048), Savage (p. 26,852), Faribault (p. 22,818), Northfield (p. 19,839), Owatonna (p. 25,381), Golden Valley (p. 20,326), Crystal (p. 22,167) and White Bear Lake (p. 24,679) all perform annual reviews for their city managers.
According to the League of Minnesota Cities’ Human Resources Handbook, a reference for city governments, performance reviews can be a great tool for communication and management of city employees. And in the instance for a contractual employee (often contracts are offered as a way to recruit experienced city managers), the handbook states that one of the benefits of a “well thought out and well-drafted” contract is the specification of how and when performance evaluations should be conducted.
Council member Al Thurley, who brought up during a meeting on Sorensen’s replacement the desire to explore a possible policy for city manager review, said that he is open to discussions on the topic. City leaders, he said, may decide that a new manager only needs formal review for the first few years of employment. And whether such a performance review should be tied to any salary increases, said Thurley, is something he hasn’t formed an opinion on yet.
Mayor Jerry Miller said that he was also open to discussing some sort of more formal policy for a city manager review process, as well, but didn’t really see how such a review should be tied directly into pay increase formulas. City leaders also need to continue keeping those ongoing, more informal tabs on the city manager position, and that’s pretty simple, said Miller. If the manager is doing his job, he said, then good. If not, the city should just find someone else for the job.
Miller recently appointed a committee to help guide the replacement policy, including several council members and representatives from the Winona business community. That group will likely soon present a recommendation about whether the city should use an outside firm to help narrow its city manager replacement search.
Sorensen, along with several council members, said they’d rather not have him involved in finding his replacement. And whether that replacement for the city’s top administrator seat must face the added scrutiny of a formal review process isn’t his concern, said Sorensen. “I don’t want the selection process related to me, I’m gone. Somebody else can defend themselves and their management style,” he said. “I’m not going to second-guess a council on what they’re doing with a new city manager. That’s not my call. I don’t care. I’m not going to be second-guessing somebody that I’m no longer working for. My life has moved on.”
But Sorensen did defend the current city government model outlined in the city charter. He said that a citizen group stepped forward to help write the city’s charter in the 1960s after many Winona residents were unhappy with the nepotism and corruption they perceived from City Hall, particularly on the sale of Central Park land. The model was taken directly from a private business model, said Sorensen, putting his role as more of a CEO of the city’s multimillion-dollar budget. He’s not allowed to deficit spend, and he’s held the city’s finances to a very high standard, he said. With Winona’s charter, the mayor acts as a chairman of the board, and together with the rest of the council, the group creates policies and ordinances that Sorensen operates under, he said.
And over the last 22 years, said Sorensen, he’s credited himself as working very closely with a changing City Council, garnering feedback on issues as they come. I haven’t won over everybody, he said, nor do I care if I did or not. But, “I think I’ve had a terrific relationship with council members who have come and gone over the years,” said Sorensen. “I absolutely believe that if you don’t have that kind of continuous dialogue, you’re missing the whole point of the relationship.”
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