Alan Webber asked Santa Fe's city manager to resign Friday | Matt Grubs
Citing a violation of city rules governing the kinds of pay raises that went to a select group of city employees the day he took office, Mayor Alan Webber said Friday afternoon he'd asked for and received the resignation of Brian Snyder, Santa Fe's city manager.
Webber also said Human Resources Director Lynette Trujillo had retired after a team of city staffers discovered the raises hadn't been handled properly. The mayor doesn't have the authority to fire division directors.
The mayor has asked Santa Fe Fire Chief Erik Litzenberg to step in as temporary city manager. At next week's City Council meeting, he plans to ask the governing body to approve the chief's appointment as interim city manager on a 90-day, nonrenewable contract.
Snyder, Trujillo and Deputy City Manager Renee Martinez awarded temporary raises to a select group of city employees who have been working to help implement a wide-ranging software platform expected to change the way the city operates and interacts with the public. The raises, either 10 or 15 percent, went to employees who had been acting as subject matter experts and what the city termed "functional leads" for the program.
City councilors had bristled over the raises, which weren't disclosed to them and totaled some $400,000. Many councilors said they didn't oppose the reason for the raises, but objected to the way in which they were given.
Webber studied the situation and issued a report on April 11 that characterized the pay hikes as a communication breakdown, but not a gross error. The mayor said he continued to meet with councilors one-on-one to work through the problem. During a session this week with new Councilor JoAnne Vigil Coppler, who formerly ran the city's Human Resources Department, the mayor said Vigil Coppler told him the raises might have violated an existing city policy.
They did.
"This, I think, changes the situation fundamentally, from a communications failure, a judgment failure, to a violation of city policies," Webber told reporters in a hastily called press briefing Friday afternoon. "It really points out a very different level of failure by management in dealing with the implementation of these temporary pay raises."
Webber vacated the raises and said he couldn't in good conscience allow pay hikes that broke city rules to continue. However, he said the basic reasons for the pay increases were sound. Webber plans to hand the City Council a new package of proposed increases, though he said he'll take more time to make certain it's something the city can support.
"Given what we've just gone through, I don't want to do anything that doesn't move in a thoughtful way. There are too many issues at stake," Webber said. "Morale in the city (among employees), morale and attitudes of people in the city at large, the cohesion of the City Council as a body, the importance of the software and our modernization … all of these are important factors. I think we've got to take them all and look at it as a whole."
The city's incentive pay policy, passed in 1992—before the city had a collective bargaining agreement with a union—says raises have to meet four criteria. They have to save the city money and enhance customer service as well as functioning as a reward for work above and beyond the employee's normal duties.
Webber said the raises approved by Snyder and championed by Martinez met those standards. However, they violated a provision of the policy that requires the city's Finance Committee to approve the raises prior to a full vote by the City Council. Neither Snyder nor Martinez told the council about the temporary increases.
The mayor again praised Vigil Coppler for pointing out the violation of city policy and for crystallizing its importance to the hundreds of city employees who didn’t get raises.
“People want to believe that the city’s management is operating fairly and in accord with policies,” Webber said Vigil Coppler told him. “And when you do that, then they understand how they’re going to be part of the program going forward. And if you don’t do that, it’s very difficult for them to know how they fit in.”
Deputy City Manager Renee Martinez' future is in flux, as Webber said he hadn't yet decided whether to ask his new city manager to remove her from her position. Martinez has been shepherding the implementation of the city's new enterprise resource planning system. It's a project the mayor and city councilors have repeatedly called critical to improving the way Santa Fe does business.
The mayor said he's been working on a proposal for reorganizing the staff of the mayor's office—he's already hired the city's first-ever chief of staff—and told reporters Friday that he didn't see a reason to keep the position of deputy city manager, considering the fact that the mayor position is now officially full time.
That doesn't necessarily mean Martinez is on the way out. She could be reassigned or hired into a different position.
Snyder will stick around, per the conditions of his contract with the city. He'll take a job as head of the Public Utilities Department, which includes the city's water division. That provision of his contract was negotiated years ago.
Though the mayor said he felt it was appropriate to ask Snyder to resign in light of the violation, he also said it was important recognize the outgoing city manager's contribution.
“I think he is a very hardworking and devoted city employee,” Webber said. “I get into the office at 8 in the morning. He’s already here. … He has taken his duties as city manager with great devotion.”
Webber had similar words for Trujillo, whom he called a hard-working member of the city's team and credited for stepping aside to let the software program implementation move forward.
