SAFFORD — The Safford City Council wants to evaluate City Manager John Cassella.
The only problem is there appears to be no mechanism in place to do so.
“My concern is the same — it’s the process,” said City Councilman Brad Hemphill. “If we have a process, why haven’t we followed it? And if we want a new process, are we starting over?”
During a work session Monday, the council learned it has not conducted an evaluation of any city manager since 2016, and most council members had a problem with the existing paperwork, which asks council members to evaluate the manager’s day-to-day interaction with staff, something council members said of which they have no knowledge.
The council opted to create a subcommittee of Councilmen Hemphill and Gene Seale, Mayor Jason Kouts and Human Resources Director Jenny Taylor, who will be tasked with creation of a new evaluation process.
“Over the next few months, the subcommittee works with Jenny, gathers information and creates a tool, we put the objectives on there in January — I evaluate my staff in January,” City Manager John Cassella said. “So if we go with a July 1 annual evaluation, it’ll give us a six-month window to evaluate me, from January to July so you don’t have a year to evaluate me. You get the tool in place, you have time to build it, you start the clock ticking in January, you give me my marching orders then, we revisit in July, and then we reset on an annual basis after that.”
While the subcommittee works out a new process, the council agreed to a review of Cassella’s self-evaluation during a closed executive session at a future meeting.
