The Dallas City Council doesn’t do a good job reviewing the performance of the five city officials it oversees, including the city manager. And by “doesn’t do a good job,” we mean the council has sometimes gone years without giving the city manager and others a review. And when it has given reviews, there is no written record of them.
Can you imagine such a thing in the corporate world?
The good news is the council is working on a plan to structure performance evaluations so they happen annually and so they are based on something more than vibes, to put it in modern terms. But as the council takes up this important work, we urge elected leaders to look beyond off-the-shelf KPIs (key performance indicators for those not hip to business jargon) and tailor evaluations to measure how well executive management is doing based on Dallas’ own strategic concerns.
Let’s acknowledge that almost anything would be an upgrade from the council’s previous process. Actually, to call it a process is too generous.
Previously, the city manager was invited to document accomplishments and identify goals. A consultant was hired to interview council members one-on-one, but those discussions focused on general feedback rather than hard metrics. The consultant then summarized the feedback in closed session with the council and the city manager.
That review was purely verbal, by the way. The council left no paper trail.
A council committee met with a consultant this week to hash out what future scorecards should look like for the city manager, the city attorney, the city auditor, the city secretary and the inspector general. The committee wasn’t making final decisions but reviewing options to forward to the full council for a vote.
For the city manager, the committee debated whether to include scores on “police and fire pension progress” and “spending vs. adopted budget.”
Some questioned the value of such metrics when City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert is legally required to increase pension payments over time and to keep a balanced budget. The discussion also touched on criteria such as resident satisfaction based on the community survey and bond and capital projects delivered on time, among other items.
In a 2024 editorial, we encouraged the City Council to look at Dallas ISD’s superintendent assessment as a model. The school board sets five goals with deadlines, such as increasing the number of graduates who are career, college or military ready from 80% to 88% by 2030. Each goal has at least three more granular performance measures.
For the city manager, imagine a goal based on capital projects delivered on deadline that includes progress measures for the convention center and Memorial Auditorium, for example.
The performance review overhaul could have been a good opportunity for Mayor Eric Johnson to tap Dallas’ leading business minds. Picture the valuable feedback that might have come from an advisory group of Dallas executives who already set benchmarks for complex organizations and who are familiar with the city’s strengths and weaknesses.
Dallas touts itself as a business center. Its city government should show the sophistication of one.