Santa Clara Residents Speak about the City Manager: No Review, No Raise

Santa Clara residents have a pretty clear opinion about whether the City Manager should receive a performance review before getting a raise.

• 92 percent said YES.

• 3 percent said NO.

• 5 percent said it was NOT IMPORTANT.

The survey followed our report that Santa Clara City Manager Jovan Grogan received a raise even though the City Council did not complete his performance evaluation. 

Under his employment agreement, the Council’s failure to finish the review by the deadline automatically triggered a 2 percent raise. (Stand Up 4 Santa Clara)

For survey respondents, the issue appears to be less about the amount of the raise than a basic principle of management:

Should the person running a city organization be evaluated before taxpayers give him more money?

The comments were plentiful and pointed. To protect respondents’ identities, we have not published individual names. Instead, the following are the most articulate comments :

This is a no-brainer. You evaluate someone’s performance before giving them a raise.

Try getting a raise in the private sector without your boss reviewing your performance first.

I’m surprised the City wasn’t already doing this. Isn’t that basic management?

Maybe the City Council should have a performance evaluation, too.

If the Council can’t get this done on its own, maybe Santa Clara needs a law requiring performance reviews before top executives receive raises.

One respondent raised a broader leadership question:

No self-respecting leader should want a raise without a performance evaluation. What kind of message does that send to everyone else in the organization?

Another theme involved Santa Clara firefighters.

Several respondents noted the contrast between the treatment of the City’s top management and firefighters, who received raises earlier this year but were denied retroactive pay. Grogan, by contrast, received both an automatic raise and retroactive compensation after his performance review was not completed. (Stand Up 4 Santa Clara)

One representative paraphrase summed it up this way:

Grogan wouldn’t give the firefighters the same privilege he received from the Council.

The survey results suggest Santa Clara residents expect the same thing from City Hall that most employers expect everywhere else:

1. Set goals.

2. Measure performance.

3. Hold people accountable.

4. Then decide whether they deserve a raise.

For Santa Clara’s highest-paid employees, that shouldn’t be controversial. It should be standard practice.