City Manager: A different perspective
 By Mark ForsytheThe Kansas City Post The most talked about topic for the last 48 hours has been the apparent firing of City Manager Wayne Cauthen. I say apparent because by charter all the mayor can really do is refuse to introduce an ordinance renewing Cauthen's contract. If the City Manager so chooses he can continue to work without a contract at his current pay rate and serve at the pleasure of the City Council. He cannot be fired without a majority vote, so as long as seven council people are happy with his performance, he stays. You'll get no argument from me that Mayor Funkhouser handled this poorly. His actions following his memo have also been ill-advised. At the minimum he should have given the council advance notice of his memo if only so they wouldn't be blindsided by the press or constituents asking for information. There is no question that the relationship between the mayor and the city council has become completely dysfunctional and may be irretrievably damaged. What strikes me as odd is that in all the hand-wringing and "I want to be mayor" posturing of certain City Council members, the indignant outrage of segments in the business community, and the predictable reactions from partisan hacks, one group of very important people has been ignored. The City employees. How do the people that work under the leadership of Wayne Cauthen feel about it? Granted nobody receiving a paycheck from the City is going to go on record in support or opposition of the City Manager, but surely the media has one or two anonymous sources within City Hall who will gladly give their opinion. A City Manager should be much more than a task master who gets the job done at any cost. Not when that cost is at the expense of the good people working for you. I have heard numerous firsthand accounts of Wayne Cauthen's managerial style that have caused me great concern. Tirades, unreasonable requests, favoritism and an atmosphere of intimidation are all common knowledge at City Hall. I'm willing to concede that perhaps my sampling is not accurate. Maybe I have only come in contact with a minority segment that has some sort of ax to grind with the City Manager, but I doubt it. I know a lot of people at 414 E 12th Street. The fact is I haven't heard one account of how wonderful it is working for the current city manager. The future of the Wayne Cauthen rests in the hands and aspirations of the City Council. Politicians live for this kind of grandstanding opportunity. Over the next few weeks and months there will be a veritable orgy of quotes, stunts, press conferences, breathless orations in council chambers and behind the scenes maneuvering. Some will use this latest mayoral blunder as a springboard for their own mayoral run. Or at least a way to rally support for their re-election. Beats doing real work I guess. I have no idea who the City Manager will be 12 months from now. My only hope is that somewhere along the way the Council will take the time to consider that leadership, employee motivation and a healthy work environment are traits worthy of just as much weight as making the trains run on time. You can command people and they will respond. But if you lead people, they will excel. |
posted by Mark at 8:57 AM
Comments on "City Manager: A different perspective"
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mainstream said ... (1:39 PM) :
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Izabella said ... (2:11 PM) :
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Anonymous said ... (2:33 PM) :
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Out with the whole funkin bunch said ... (2:51 PM) :
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Just another eastsider said ... (2:54 PM) :
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Mark said ... (3:08 PM) :
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Mark said ... (3:13 PM) :
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Anonymous said ... (6:45 PM) :
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mainstream said ... (10:18 PM) :
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Eric said ... (10:52 PM) :
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Anonymous said ... (6:52 PM) :
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mainstream said ... (8:26 PM) :
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Anonymous said ... (9:30 AM) :
post a commentThat's the rub. We've got a terrible mayor trying to fire a questionable (and most probably bad) city manager. People defend him, knowing how dysfunctional he is, by comparing him to his predecessors.That doesn't fly with me.
I hear from many City employees, and well as community leaders, that Wayne is HORRIBLE.
The problem is, how do you (and can you) attract the right talent in the current mess Funk has created? 75% of the council (or more) is against Funk; his wife is running the mayor's office; and blunders of the funk admin so far don't bode well.
The top candidate, since before he took office, was Ed Wolf anyways.
We have a Council-Manager (not a Mayor-Manager) form of government, and Funk can only govern through consensus if he is going to be effective for his one and only term in office.
You called it, Mark - Wayne can stay at the pleasure of the council, not Funk.
I guess that council-mayor retreat day accomplished little toward building consensus or deciding on priorities. They should have spent that day volunteering at the City Union Mission. At least some citizens could have benefited from that!
Now Funk has officially tied his hands at city hall with both the city manager and the council against him. For the good of our city, Funk and Gloria stop waiting around for that "recall", resign now, pack up the children and head to Europe.
I doubt any councilman knows any city employee by name. They're an elitist bunch more concerned with themselves then the rank and file.
Wait till a union contract comes up. Especially the firefighters. That's when the bought and paid for council will fall all over themselves to show how labor friendly they are.
I like your take on this. Nobody thinks about the city employees. I don't think your sample is out of line Mark. I doubt you'll find many tears at City Hall when Cauthen leaves.
I personally don't care if a few city employees get their noses out of joint. I have dealt with more than my share of idiots from neighborhood preservation and Zoning and have had to read their own regulations to them. So in my opinion there are a good many who need their noses tweaked.
I judge the city manager's job by how the city is managed and how well city services are performed.
From my personal experience the city is doing a much bettter job on basic services. When I first moved to the Manchester neighborhood on the east side of Kansas city, some 20 years ago, we were the abandon area in the third district, rarely saw the snow plow, no salt on hills unless it was an intersection on truman rd. Street sweeping, forget about it. If there was a dead tree in front of your house , the only way you could get it removed was to cut it down yourself.
There has been a change we are now getting many of the services we need. In the recent snow and the ice storm, the snow plow was in the neighborhood and the salt truck repeatedly traveled through the neighborhood salting the intersections and dangerous hills. I had no trouble traveling on the side streets this week. In the last 3 or 4 years our streets are being resurfaced and maintained. In fact, one afternoon, after several different city departments were observed working on different problems in the neighborhood, my neighbor remarked it looked like it was election time.
It make me wonder if the real reason Cauthen is being attacked is because he can't be bought. Also, maybe, he insists everybody gets basic services no matter their political influence on the local council critter.
I don't know if it is true but I do like what I'm seeing in the neighborhood. Lord knows the east side of the third has little political pull.
Jack
I hear you Eastsider. I'm not disputing the fact that Cauthen gets results. I can name some instances where he has been very effective in getting things done.
However... Do the ends always justify the means? I guess that's up to the council, and ultimately the voters.
Thanks for reading.
mainstream,
Attracting top talent to our current situation at City Hall will indeed be challenging. I think Funkhouser's statement about a "regional search" tells me he already has somebody in mind. Getting a pissed off council to approve? Probably not anytime soon.
He has three votes with him in the "anybody but Cauthen" camp, at least three against him in the "I want to be mayor in 2011" camp which leaves six in play to get two.
You would be surprised at how many City employees support the Funk in this decision and will be glad when the reign of King Cauthen has ended. Money that should have been spent on infrastructure was used to make the downtown attractive. The downtown won't feel so attractive when sewers cause the streets to cave in reminiscent of Chicago several years ago.
Anon at 6:45 pm -
I think you're exactly right. Cauthen is Caustic and while he has done some things better than previous CM's, he's a maniac and a nightmare from a managerial perspective.
Problem is, his replacement is either going to be useless or set up to fail, with the way Funk has chosen to handle the situation.
So I assume that "regional search" means he wants to pluck someone from Overland Park or Lee's Summit. Shouldn't we have someone with So instead of someone with experience running a real urban city we will get someone who knows how to build strip malls and cul-de-sacs - not neighborhoods and trains.
Mar,
I am an AW employee (after-Wayne). I've been there for less than 2 years and came from a decent sized city outside of the state. The only employees that are left are the ones that aren't able to get a job elsewhere or are hanging on till their retirement date hits.
The qualified people found jobs and moved on. They reached the point where their caring and passion to get something done was overwhelmed by frustration and calls from 29 to break the rules and do questionable things.
The HR department won't acknowledge that the pay grades aren't enough to hire good talent to take the City past its early retirement brain drain and can't get someone hired in under 120 days which kills the City when competing with private entities. The HR department makes people fill out an electronic resume but still have to insult professionals by having them fill out the same information on a paper resume.
However, the HR director hired by the manager seems to get whatever he wants with promotions and bonuses for certain people while finding the time to push through a salary pay raise for every position in his department only.
It's a joke that a City this large is dealing with all of this. Funkhouser just happens to be the unlucky recipient of this. Whoever won would have to deal with all the issues that have been festering since the middle of the Collins term till now. If the City were a private entity, at this point our stock would be de-listed or the parts sold off to make cash flow. It's rather sad. The CIMO group can't get anything completed from initation to finish. The HR department can't help us recruit good talent. PW still hoards cash. Parks just eats away money doing master plans or gumming up anything that touches a parkway. Water is sinking a ton of money into a simple channel fix on Brush Creek and frittering away the storm water fees. Finance can't approve an ordinance in under a month. I don't know if there is any recovery other than getting back to basics which is what Funkhouser ran on. How can we build big expensive light up artwork all over downtown if we can't even maintain the sewers which our health depends on.
Help us please!
Eric should visit the northland.
Funk has now ensured that Cauthen will outlast him in office.
Incredible.
I'm a city employee and I, for one, am thrilled that Cauthen will stay. I would not have shed a tear if he left but his presence means that we will have a leader in City Hall. Somebody who knows what he is doing.
I wanted Funkhouser to succeed. Maybe he is making progress in his way of thinking. Tilting at windmills makes for good reading. It's not what our city needs.
I just hope the Council remebers that we elected them too. Frankly, I have not seen any great leaps in progress, just backbiting. As a City employee we hate breaking in the new council, takes way too long for them to understand what government is all about.
"Squitiro acknowledges she's a huge force in the mayor's office. She's the mayor's chief volunteer and advisor. She even has a private cubicle in City Hall with a private entrance to her husband's office.
"I do let people know what his thoughts and feelings are when he's not there," she said. "That's one of my biggest roles to answer what his mind has already spoken."
OMGWTF?
Can you imagine? You are at work. You get a new boss. The boss brings his wife to work and puts her in a cubicle outside his office. She doesn't work for the company, but she is there EVERY DAY.
You go to talk to your boss but his wife stops you and asks what you want to talk to him about.
You say you want to discuss a pay raise.
She informs you that "his mind has already spoken" on that issue and you're not getting a raise.
And, just to top things off, she does stuff like this:
"Between the two, they are accused of referring to some neighborhoods as the "black part of town," calling a black City Hall staffer "Mammy,..."
Corporate America has ZERO TOLERANCE for that type of nonsense.
Unbelievable that they just don't get it. Totally clueless.
It's like a trainwreck.
For Councilmen and women to sign us up for three more continuing years of harrassment and mistreatment is what is beyond my area of expertise. Political ends because of race? Because they felt left out? As a black man, my heart goes out to the white middle and upper managers who are trying to make a difference.
or stupid hillbillies.
Mistreatment? Harrassment? Please. The only thing I've ever seen Cauthen do is ask people to do what they said they would do. If they don't do that, he'll ask why it didn't get done. That means he holds you accountable. What's wrong with that? You might feal harrassed if you are continuously not taking care of your business. Whose fault is that? Look in the mirror.
It shouldn't matter what color you are at City Hall. It should matter that you care about saving the citizens from wasteful spending, taking the extra step in helping people get through the Hall levels, and minimizing the City's future obligations from legal, maintenance, or liability issues.
Wayne doesn't care about anything but making Wayne look good. Imagine if instead of spending $1.5 MILLION on railings for freeway bridges if Wayne had determined that fixing all the sidewalks in Ivanhoe or along Troost or Truman was more important to revitalizing our community.
See http://kansascityconfidential.blogspot.com/2007/06/is-bridge-zilla-dead.html for an example of how Cauthen craps on the neighborhoods.
im a retired city employee with 32 years ive worked under all the city managers starting with kipp. they at least knew your name and rod the same elevator that you did. for someone that never held a cm job before and then mayor kay hired him at 200,000 plus a year whats that tell you. i would still be there except for that reason the labor class morale is so low that its impossible to work at this level. you have people afraid to say anything to anyone for fear of wayne firing you except the higher ups who get fired for sending porno and are allow to stay to get there full pay plus a severance package that the taxpayers will never find out about. if that was a labor class his ass would be escorted out the door immediately.