Years ago, I had a manager who, on occasion, liked to say, “Please don’t waste time analyzing the obvious. ”I think that statement applies to the current city manager salary conundrum in Port Townsend. It is now obvious to everybody in Port Townsend that the City Manager’s current salary is excessive, way too excessive.

The city manager may have some responsibility for this but most of the fault probably rests with the fact that the hiring responsibility was overseen by the city council. That included then council member and now Mayor David Faber. The mayor does a fine job with ribbon cuttings and parades but when he was tasked with replacing a city manager, the task was apparently greater than the skill set of that sitting city council. Relying on search firms can be helpful as long as one remembers that the search firm is “selling” a candidate and the hiring party needs to scrub and vet everything. The current Port Townsend City Council also should take a hit for this mess. Now that we all know the obvious, they want to do more analysis and, unbelievably, consider a possible salary increase. In other words, now that we are in this hole, they would like to keep digging. In the past, I have handled all sorts of compensation programs both domestic and international and it would be safe to say a competent management team would never find themselves in this position.

Personally, I don’t think reducing the city manager’s salary is an option. That would be adding cruelty on top of this mess. I do think it is reasonable to limit the raise to the COLA given in January and apply a salary freeze to the current city manager for the foreseeable future.

Pat Keaty

Port Townsend