Posted by Jeremy Shulkin
Tomorrow night City Manager Mike O’Brien will present his self-evaluation (which you can read here) to the city council in which he’ll assess his work and accomplishments over the past year.
O’Brien will also receive scores from his bosses: the city councilors. Each councilor fills out a sheet that looks like this:
Using a score sheet that looks like this:
Expect him to get some overall glowing reviews from the council, especially after a year that saw continued strong bond ratings, the airport taken off the city’s books, progress on CitySquare and the CSX deal. Lukes could go after him for raising taxes, however.
The city councilors’ reviews are due by 7:00 pm tomorrow. Luckily, with this posted online forever, your deadline isn’t so strict. Feel free to perform your own evaluation of the City Manager.
Daily Worcesteria 
The city council will do its best to put lipstick on this pig but if voters got a chance my guess would be “F” as in FIRED.
Taxes, pools, taxes, Gemme/Rojas, taxes, skating rink, taxes, bloated executive salaries, taxes, non-resident administrators, taxes.
Zed for City Manager!
Zed dude is on the pulse of this here town. Not like CM Obie, riding around in a taxpayer paid A/C’d SUV with tinted windows under cover of night.
If I were to vote about the CM’s performance, gotta give the dude a D+ and only cause I gotta place in my heart for dis here town.
Coulda been a “B” if he had the balls to hit up the non-profits – they got the cash, hundreds of millions of it. They owe us – been milking the taxpayers for decades – time they showed they had a conscious.
Did I say conscious? Heck I forgot (whack on the right temporal). Conscious and non-profits are mutually exclusive concepts.
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Sorry Will W., non-profits are supposed to be conscious and have a CONSCIENCE, but there’s also nothing that anyone can do to make them pay up. There’s just no legal obligation there. Instead of scapegoating large non-profits that are increasingly the bulk of the jobs in Worcester (and bundling them with small non-profits that don’t see anywhere near the same stability or salaries), the City Council and City Manager should be looking to bring more diverse economic industries to the City. They should be engaging the growing film industry that is beginning to headquarter itself here, and while it may be unpopular, there are many non-profits, including the MCPHS who are literally saving Worcester by continuing to invest in bringing people here.
That said, I think that the CM $12,000 in back pay while asking the taxpayers to pony up additional funds is just the tipping point of how much he doesn’t get it. Making a salary of nearly $200k when families are scraping to feed themselves is what really lacks conscience, or conscious for that matter. But Jeremy is right, we’ll see glowing review after glowing review, and honestly there’s nothing much we can do about it with a crazy system that keeps us two steps away from accountability. I’m in Detroit for the US Social Forum with some other folks from Worcester, but hopefully people will show up and let the City Council know that once again, they don’t speak for most of us.
Hey clbergpowers, good catch – thanks.
As for the NP’s, I’m referring to PILOT, not a tax law change – that’s impossible.
PILOT is doable – baby steps have been made.
What MCPHS and WPI have contributed is peanuts relative to their endowments.
I wouldn’t give the MCPHS kudos. What they do is for their sole benefit. The recent acquisition news is pure PR.
As for jobs, you’re right. Bringing more diverse would… naa… never happen. The entire city bureaucracy is geared to catering to the NP”s.
Real companies just don’t fit into the landscape here. And please, don’t refer to the thousands of college grads the locals produce annually. They ain’t sticking around. Why? No real jobs. Who wants to work for an NP? Those grads dream of careers and want a real life after school. Something Wusta can’t offer.
Budding film industry? Are you talking about Big Asshole’s vids? Just kidding.
Locally? Beg to differ; its not even in a budding stage yet.
Good post.
Your line of business is creating sustainable change eh? Um… in order to create, one has to destroy. Um… now who said that?