Council didn't quite make its case

The Baker City Council had the authority to fire City Manager Steve Brocato. Which it did, by a 4-3 vote Tuesday night.

But we don’t like the way councilors went about this.

As to the authority, the city charter explains the Council’s power: “The manager shall be appointed for an indefinite term and may be removed at the pleasure of a majority of the council.”

Brocato, like his predecessors, did not have a contract.

The absence of a contract, combined with the above clause in the charter, means that if at least four councilors agree, they can fire the city manager any time and for any reason, or for no reason at all.

Of course we, as the citizens who elected the council members, deserve to know why they terminate the manager.

Of the four councilors who voted to fire Brocato — Aletha Bonebrake, Clair Button, Beverly Calder and Mayor Dennis Dorrah — Bonebrake had the most to say during Tuesday’s meeting about why Brocato deserved to lose the job he had held since January 2007.

“I’ve spoken many times about your defiance and your unwillingness to listen,” Bonebrake told Brocato Tuesday. “I’ve heard you say critical things about other members of the Council that lead me to understand you can’t work with members of the council. I am deeply disturbed at tempers displayed toward Council and the public. I think someone who runs a city should have better control.”

In their recent evaluation of Brocato, on the subject of “controls emotions effectively in difficult situations,” Calder, Dorrah and Bonebrake all gave Brocato the lowest possible rating: 1 on a scale of 1-5. Button rated Brocato at 2.

Bonebrake’s comments Tuesday, and those evaluation scores, represent legitimate complaints. And they highlight problems which, if Brocato is unwilling or incapable of addressing them, are sufficient grounds for his dismissal.

Like the councilors, we have occasionally chastised Brocato for what seemed to us his lack of respect for the opinions of councilors and members of the public, and his intemperate, unnecessary interjections during council meetings.

At times we felt that Brocato had forgotten that although his job is to run the city, the Council decides in which direction the city ought to move.

We doubt Brocato was unaware that, like us, some councilors were dissatisfied with aspects of his performance, or why they felt that way.

Nonetheless, the Council’s vote Tuesday troubles us because the recent public record, including the aforementioned evaluation that was released less than three weeks ago, gives city residents no reason to expect that Tuesday’s meeting would be Brocato’s last.

The Council’s May 26 meeting, at which councilors presented their evaluations to Brocato, was the ideal time for the four concerned councilors to give Brocato an ultimatum.

We don’t see how Brocato could have known, without such a deadline, that all four councilors were so dismayed by his performance that they would, 17 days later, vote to fire him.

Two of those four — Button and Bonebrake — have been councilors for just five months.

Button, in his evaluation, rated Brocato’s overall performance as 4.26 — an approval rating, as it were, of 85 percent. Of the three others, only Calder, at 47.2 percent, gave Brocato a failing grade (Dorrah’s overall rating was 63 percent, Bonebrake’s 70 percent).

The four councilors should have told Brocato on May 26 that if he didn’t substantially improve in the areas where his ratings were lowest, and within a reasonable time — two months, say — then he could expect the Council to consider a motion to fire him.

Then, if Brocato failed to heed the warning, the four councilors could have done exactly what they did Tuesday.

Given that scenario, we would have agreed with their decision.

In that case the four councilors could have explained to their constituents that they had given Brocato a fair chance, but that he had declined to take it.

Had that happened, the Council’s action would not have seemed precipitous to any reasonable person, as Tuesday’s vote did.

Ultimately, we think councilors should have waited just a bit longer, to gather more convincing evidence of Brocato’s inability to correct his flaws, before they subjected the city to the hassle and expense of recruiting a new manager.

Although we agree with the four councilors that Brocato’s comportment sometimes fell short of expectations, he has done a pretty good job of running the city. The four councilors who fired him think so too — in the areas of “ management” and “goal achieving” he received no score lower than a 2, and just three of those (all from Calder).

Last year Brocato negotiated five-year labor contracts with each of the city’s three unions, an unprecedented accomplishment that locks in the city’s biggest expense through mid-2013.

Those contracts are reasonable, and comparable to previous pacts, with annual salary increases ranging from 2 percent to 4 percent.

Of course Brocato’s strengths as a manager neither offset, nor excuse, his weaknesses. The Council has no obligation to retain a manager who is effective but contentious.

But the abrupt vote during Tuesday’s meeting happened without the full council discussing Brocato’s strengths and weaknesses.

Firing a city manager is contentious enough. Taking that step without a detailed discussion involving the entire City Council makes it more so.