In case you haven’t heard, the most recent (of many) hot button issues in Christiansburg, VA has to do with a sudden push to get a contract in place for the Town Manager before the newly elected officials of the Town take office in September. It is at that same meeting that, historically, the Council has decided whether or not to enter into another 1 year verbal contract with the Town Manager for his services. Not only has the timing changed, it has now become important to make sure that it is in writing and for a time frame roughly 3 times longer than in previous contracts for that same position. (See these two Roanoke Times articles for further information and ‘the’ sample contract here.)
Christiansburg council discusses contract for manager – Roanoke.com
Why rush a contract? – Roanoke.com
It appears that someone outside of town government has received a copy of that document. Since it wasn’t me, I had to resort to a more inquisitive approach to try to determine what might be up.
Starting with the assumption that the Town Manager is not an Attorney as well as an Engineer, I went back through the data on the ‘pay the bills’ sheets looking for any organizations that the Town might be paying membership fees to that would offer this type of document.
My first look was to the VML site where I found nothing. After a few more trial and error episodes, I finally landed at the ICMA site online where they have a sample government document “Model Employment Agreement that is a downloadable pdf format. Since I did a fairly extensive search and this is the only model I have found, I feel it is safe to assume that this model document is likely to have formed the basis for the Town Manager’s contract. You can view the document as a pdf here or simply click on the link on the ICMA page above. (Please note that this particular document was generated in 2003 and there is no evidence to indicate updates have occurred. This could mean that parts of the document are no longer consistent with State Codes.)
You will find a lot of blank spots on this document which would be where the specifics of a given contract were denoted such as the length of time that the document is in effect. That could be 3 months, 1 year, 3 years, 10 years, etc.
Page 1 of the document (page 3 of the pdf), under Section 3: Compensation subsection C provides information on an annual basis to increase compensation with 4 options available. All of the options address pay increases or bonuses (read the document for more details).
Oops! Sorry got ahead of myself. Start with the Table of Contents. Here is where you can get an overview of everything covered in the document. For example:
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Section 6 Automobile
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Section 7 Retirement
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Section 8 General Business Expenses
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Section 9 Termination
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Section 10 Severance
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Section 11 Resignation
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Section 12 Performance Evaluation
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Section 13 Hours of Work
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Section 14 Outside Activities
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Section 15 Moving and Relocation Expenses
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Section 16 Home Sale and Purchase Expenses
I included those examples because if a precedent is set whereby such a contract is used in the future for the hiring of any new Town Manager, Section 15 and 16 could be particularly important.
Section 9 includes a lot of Termination related details such as #2:
2. If the Employer, citizens or legislature acts to amend any provisions of the [charter, code, enabling legislation] pertaining to the role, powers, duties, authority, responsibilities of the Employee’s position that substantially changes the form of government, the Employee shall have the right to declare that such amendments constitute termination.
So, not only the Town, but the citizens and EVEN THE STATE OF VIRGINIA are limited in making any legitimate changes to the Town Managers functions without the Town Manager being able to decide he has thus been terminated and is entitled to all benefits under the terms of termination.
No reduction in pay can occur unless it is applied equally to all department heads. (How does that encourage good performance?) There are several options listed there which all have the Town as the short end of the financial stick. However, Section 11 gives the Town Manager the right to resign any time he wants without having the town for any inconvenience or extra expense the town incurs due to his actions.
Section 10: Severance, recommends a minimum of one years salary at current pay to be paid in a lump sum. (Glance back at termination section to see that virtually any reason for the Town Manager leaving his position, including breach of contract by either party, warrants this severance pay.)
Section 17: Indemnification, even requires that the Town go beyond the applicable Federal, State, and Local Law to provide legal coverage for the Town manager “against any tort, professional liability claim or demand or other legal action, whether groundless or otherwise, arising out of an alleged act or omission occurring the the performance of Employee’s duties”… This even includes independent legal council for the Town Manager at the Town’s expense.
Please read this document. If you have any information as to how accurately this reflects the contract that the Town Council is currently working on, I would love to hear about it.
I cannot believe that this sort of manipulation is under consideration by our Council. At first, I was irate about the timing. Now, I am just disgusted in general.
I want to know what Town Council members knew about this before it was presented by the Mayor in those nice little manilla envelopes. I want to know what Council members may have even provided feedback in setting up the final copy that includes all of the dates and rates.
If Town Council and the Town Manager had any hopes of restoring trust with citizens, this should just about ‘sink that ship’. But, obviously, it is business as usual with no respect for citizens.
This just totally STINKS!!! Read it and form your own opinion.
CMA site online where they have a sample government document “Model Employment Agreement
As to a roughly 3 year contract, there are citizens who have complained to the Town Manager about problems for years without the problem ever being addressed. Maybe that contract should include something whereby he is responsible for paying for the damages to property from sewer and stormwater, for devaluation of homes because of that and because of poor decisions made (i.e., Aquatic Center expansion). Maybe he needs to cover the costs for every time DCR has had to come in and enforce the very laws that the Town is suppose to be enforcing concerning Erosion and Sediment Control.
Maybe, just maybe, if the Council and Town Manager had paid a bit more attention to what citizens wanted instead of what they wanted, citizens would be a bit more agreeable to this contract.
Awareness Fan
July 4, 2010 at 2:38 am
Tired of Bloggers: “…complain…every little thing”…”twenty century”..YES, Terpenny has taken the town BACK to a previous century!
The ‘little thing’ is an extreme measure planned to lock-in an unwanted entity.
If the currently elected officials are seated and allowed to vote, rather than ‘lame-ducks’ taking measures in efforts to gain postion on the Planning Commission, etc., consideratons may well be very different.
Folks have literally had to fight to get information about Town actions, via Freedom of Information. The already economically failed ‘water-hole’, built on fill-dirt on a hillside, is most likely illegal from engineering and safety viewpoints. Where were the building code inspectors? It is not acceptable to build on (newly fllled) fill-dirt ‘ground’. The scenario will be ‘settled’ when the settling begins. Oh, maybe flexible concrete and steel beams were used(?). Let alone, the year(s) late opening; oh, that’s right: there’s been so many water leaks..oh, no….it was the architects ‘fault’(?). WOW, a buck being passed several times!
I think some of this town’s leaderhship members and actions may finally be scrutinzied in national media as an exemplary ‘good ole boyz gone wild’ community government. It is truly a study-worthy oddity.
Lance has ‘lanced’ the future of many, through his rather mysterious connections and power. What a poor example of citizenship.
‘Mikey’ and the ‘L’ word: oddities within the 21st Century. They should quietly leave; leave their poor planning and pork-barrel projects for others to suffer with. At least there might be no more proliferation of suffering.
Tired of the Bloggers
July 2, 2010 at 9:02 pm
The “concerned citizens” of Christiansburg need to stop complaining about every single little thing and let the officials that THEY elected do their job. Lance has done a lot to take this town into the twenty-century and to increase the revenues of Christiansburg. For him to want some security for a few years, like many other localities are doing now, is such a ridiculous thing to argue over. If the same people that keep coming back over and over again with complaints aren’t satisfied with Christiansburg, why don’t they move to Blacksburg. We would be more than happy to let them go.
Carol Lindstrom
July 2, 2010 at 11:08 pm
Exactly, let those the people elected make the decision, not those leaving office. All these years, this has been something address in September by the incoming elected officials who would then be working with him for the next year. If he is doing his job so well and there is evidence to support that, then he should have no problem. So, what is so frightening that some are trying to push this through now? If you read the original Aquatic Center Agreement with Virginia Tech and the one that was finally accepted, you can see that Virginia Tech was being all but given the Aquatic Center. It was because of all those “concerned citizens” that it wasn’t passed the first time around. Your tired of bloggers and I’m tired of blatant disregard for State Laws, Town Charter, and Town Code. Give me the facts to show what the Town Manager has done for this town and how he has increased revenue. Anybody can say that he/she does a wonderful job, providing the facts to support those statements can be a tad bit harder. I’ll be happy to post what you find. Cite your source!
concerned citizen
June 30, 2010 at 9:23 am
it seems to be as underhanded as usual and if someone would dig deep enough mike barber will jump up somewhere along the line . town council should be looking for a tm replacement rather than trying to encourage lance to stay.town is looking for money -why-check the empty busses still burning money on a daily basis and the pool has cost the tax payer thru the nose -all mike and lance-let’s get rid of both