Evaluation Committee Chair Leo Robinson said this week that City Manager Jay Ash will receive an overall excellent evaluation from city councillors on his annual evaluation team.
Councillors have been meeting for about a month to discuss the evaluation and address each of the numerous points for which Ash is evaluated on a yearly basis.
Three public meetings were held, which concluded this week.
“Overall, he’s going to get a rating of excellent,” Robinson said. “We’re going to fine tune the report and then present it at the next Council meeting to the all of the Council.”
He said Ash scored excellent on all points save for public safety and Personnel/Administration. On those, he received ratings of ‘Good.’
“The Council generally wants to see more police walking beats and the police have not been consistent in complying to that request and we would like to see that become better,” Robinson said.
He said the other rating was specifically in regard to union relations. He said they believe Ash has assembled an excellent team and hired locally, but some union issues could be improved.
“On union related matters, the Council believes a more collaborative approach is desirable,” he said.
That said, Ash scored ‘Excellent’ ratings in eight other categories.
“Other than those two identified things, we didn’t disagree on anything,” said Robinson. “As far as financing goes, we just got the upgraded ‘AA’ bond rating, and the neighborhood development and economic development successes speak for themselves.”
The next meeting of the Council – the last of the year – is slated for Dec. 16.