Agenda Packets - 1999/04/05 - Laserfiche WebLink

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4 April 1, 1999 To: Honorable Mayor and City Council From: Chuck Whiting, City Administrator Re: Assistant City Administrator Position I would like to propose an upgrade from the city's Assistant to the City Administrator position to Assistant City Administrator position. There are several reasons for this change. First, I have asked this position to take on more responsibilities that should be reflected in the job description. Council will note the underlined portions of the existing job descriptions to be additional responsibilities for the position. My overall objectives are to make this position comparable to other department head positions, formalize the role of acting administrator in the city administrator's absence and instill a true leadership role in the organization from this position rather than a simple extension of the administrator's office. Second, I would not be considering this if it were not for the fact that Carl Schmidt has demonstrated her abilities to warrant considering assigning additional responsibilities to her within the organization. While these changes certainly can be considered to benefit her with additional compensation and career development, I believe the expanded role benefits the organization and justifies meeting the added expense. A little background may be helpful for new council members on past roles now assumed by Cari's position. Prior to my coming to Mounds View,the city employed Tim Cruikshank, first as an administrative intern and eventually as an assistant to the city administrator. Mr. Cruikshank left to become city administrator for Lauderdale, and has since gone on to the same position for Minnetrista. After leaving, Dawn Weitzel was taken on in the administrative intern position and was in that position upon my hiring three years ago. Cathy Bennett was the city's economic development coordinator at that time,but was utilized as acting city administrator for a short time during the interim search in part due to the absence of a finance director and a community development director. While akin to making Kevin Carroll the acting administrator today, I believe Cathy was utilized much due to her leadership abilities as much as anything, but it is unclear why the Council at that time did not place a department head in that role. At the end of 1996 in looking at the 1997 budget, I concluded to let Ms. Weitzel go, meaning no intern position and formalize Cathy Bennett's role by upgrading her position and pay to economic development director with a greater role in general city administration under the city administrator. With Weitzel not being replaced, her personnel administrative duties were moved to Lynnette Morgan whose position was changed to human resources coordinator with a minor upgrade in pay. At the end of 1997, both Morgan and Bennett left and I moved to go back to the economic development coordinator position which resulted in the hiring of Mr. Carroll, and to combine the human resources administrative duties with administrative duties resulting the in the hiring of Ms. Schmidt as assistant to the city administrator. Also during this time I split the city's administrative functions out from the finance department and placed them under the city administrator (where they were when I came here) and essentially managed the department through Cari. I'll spare more details other than to add that several additional positions have been