Council Will Hire Consultant To Exam Crum Performance City Will Pay $5,000 To Gather Information About City Manager

FROM, FOR THE RECORD (Saturday, March 23, 1996): The cost of a contract between the city of Spokane and Haupt Management Consultants cannot exceed $5,000. An editing error made this fact wrong in a story Friday.

The Spokane City Council plans to hire a consulting team to help evaluate how well City Manager Roger Crum is doing his job.

Council members will use the information gathered by the consultants to decide whether to renew Crum’s $93,000-a-year contract.

His four-year contract expired last September, and he’s been without a new agreement since.

“We owe it to Roger to get this thing done,” said Councilman Jeff Colliton, who headed the council committee charged with picking the consultant.

The council plans to vote Monday on a proposed contract with Haupt Management Consultants. The evaluation costs more than $5,000.

Haupt Consultants met with the council behind closed doors earlier this week to discuss how the evaluation will be done.

The three-man consulting team will interview council members and other City Hall workers, as well as community leaders, said Jerome Haupt, a retired U.S. Army colonel.

The consultants then will compile a report for the council.

“We manage the informationgathering process,” Haupt said. “We do not evaluate. The only evaluators are the council.”

Crum assumed the manager’s post in 1991 when Terry Novak quit to take a job as director of the Joint Center for Higher Education.

Crum said Thursday he isn’t terribly worried about the outcome.

A city manager always is under intense scrutiny, he said, but he feels confident about the job he’s doing.

“Frankly, we accomplished quite a bit this past year,” said Crum, adding he and his employees managed to balance the budget despite declining revenues.

But, Crum said, “Anybody who’s having their final grades done, there’s always a little anxiety. Even with a contract, it doesn’t mean that any Monday night you can’t be fired.”

It takes four council members to get rid of the manager.

The proposed city-county charter had Crum looking for work last year.

In September, he was one of three finalists for a job in Ann Arbor, Mich., last year but wasn’t picked for the post.

Crum now faces a petition drive aimed at changing the city to a strong-mayor form of government, which would eliminate the city manager job.

Colliton said the council plans to make a decision on Crum’s contract by mid-May.

While the state open-meetings law says personnel discussions can take place in secret session, any vote on Crum’s future must be made in public.

“All of this will be brought up in open session,” Colliton said.

, DataTimes