City Council Preview: March 29
This week’s City Council meeting is Tuesday at 6:30pm. The agenda is here.
Topics: The search for a new City Manager.
Zoom Link: https://zoom.us/j/91727574825
Interim/Acting City Manager: Ed Augustus has resigned as City Manager. In recent years it doesn’t feel like we know how to search for and hire a new City Manager without the process being unprofessional and insider-y. The Mayor has publicly proposed that Assistant City Manager Eric Batista be the “interim” City Manager starting in June and going through March 2023. The last time we had to hire a new City Manager, Ed Augustus was quickly appointed Manager while we did a search, and he said he was definitely definitely not going to be permanent City Manager, then our search turned out to not be very extensive and we sort of gave up, and Augustus became the permanent Manager. Are we planning to do the same thing here? Is there any city job for which we spend less time interviewing our hires than City Manager?
Anyway, the Council will go into executive (private) session to discuss this.
The agenda item for the executive session proposes “That the City Council does hereby convene in Executive Session…and the City Council will not reconvene in open session.” Which maybe means that the rest of the agenda will be punted to next week’s meeting?
School Committee Redistricting: There are a couple items asking where things are with establishing School Committee districts.
Four-Percent Tax on High Earners: Councilor King wants the Council to endorse a proposed amendment to the state constitution taxing income over $1 million an additional 4%.