UPDATE: I contacted a current city councilor about this and they said they were unsure what was going on. A former city official told me this title change is NOT going towards the new budget analyst but the CURRENT council chief of Staff, Jim David. But what is confusing is that Mr. David would also be the direct supervisor of the clerk staff which is odd since the city clerk is really the defacto COS of council because of charter language. So why is Mr. David getting the new position and NOT the city clerk? That answer I cannot give you.
Most organizations would have changed the title before advertising the position, but that is NOT how the city council does things. Half-Backwards. The Budget Analyst/legislative advisor was retiring so the city council was tasked with replacing that person (a position that I thought the city really didn’t need because I was unaware of any policy he helped work on or crafted over the years). We also PAY the municipal league to lobby the legislature on our behalf, so having an internal legislative person seems like duplicity.
So I guess the city council just waited for this person to retire before admitting that the position was obsolete;
So why didn’t they just advertise the position that way? Oh, that’s right, because if you look under the pay grade, you will see they get quite the bump. Not bad, getting a raise a week after you are hired, she must be an over achiever. I wonder if the pay bump will be discussed in the meeting. Doubtful.
While I agree the council staff should have some kind of a supervisor, they already do, the city clerk. So why isn’t he the supervisor for the city council staff? I don’t think the council staff needs a direct supervisor but someone who they can go to with day to day HR stuff but the council chairs really should be the direct supervisors.
It’s funny how the new council is taking on all this new staff and I don’t think it was their idea, I think that the council chairs, Soehl and Merkouris have been cooking up these staff additions for awhile so that when stuff goes south on the council they can blame staff, oldest political trick in the book.