In an unusually testy session Sept. 17, Phoenix City Council rehired the city manager who retired four years ago as four members criticized the haste and seeming secrecy of the process.<\/p>\n
Ed Zuercher, who worked his way up City Hall\u2019s ranks over 28 years from an administrative intern to Phoenix\u2019s top administrator, replaces the man he lobbied for as his replacement when he retired in 2011.<\/p>\n
Zuercher will earn $415,542 a year when he assumes the position Nov. 17, the day after City Manager Jeff Barton retires.<\/p>\n
Zuercher\u2019s surprise return to the office he held for 11 years did not go smoothly as some council members criticized the absence of a transparent hiring process that considered no other internal or external candidates or citizen input.<\/p>\n
Mayor Kate Gallego led the 5-4 vote that brings Zuercher back to City Hall, with Vice Mayor Ann O\u2019Brien and council members Debra Stark, Kevin Robinson, Jim Waring joining her.<\/p>\n
Two main themes emerged among opponents, who included council members Betty Guardado, Anna Hernandez, Laura Pastor and Kesha Hodge Washington.<\/p>\n
One involved alleged civil rights violations by Phoenix Police during his tenure at the helm of a city that employs over 14,500 workers.<\/p>\n
The other\u00a0 involved the fact that Zuercher\u2019s hiring came only a month after Barton announced his retirement.<\/p>\n
Even some members who voted for Zuercher conceded the hiring process was not the norm \u2013 especially for the top administrator of the nation\u2019s fifth largest city.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was some sort of secret process,\u201d Waring said. \u201cMy whole involvement was one council person called me and said, \u2018Hey, Ed Zuercher, might be interested in coming back.\u2019 And I said, \u2018That\u2019s great\u2019. And I called Ed Zuercher, and he said, \u2018Yep, I might be interested in coming back.\u2019 And I said, \u2018That\u2019s great.\u2019 Now here we are.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gallego left no question about her feelings about Zuercher by kicking off the council\u2019s discussion of his hiring with a ringing endorsement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am pleased to support Ed Zuercher to be our next city manager,\u201d Gallego said. \u201cHe loves Phoenix. He loves its history, its people, its diversity and its promise. He was the right person to lead us in the past, when he helped us get through the Great Recession \u2013 some of the most difficult times for our city.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what matters much more is he is the right person to lead us into the future,\u201d the mayor continued. \u201cPhoenix is one of the fastest growing cities in America, and not by accident. We are a city built on innovation and technology, and are home to some of the most important companies in America.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re home to some of the smartest and hardest working people out there, and our city government has made significant progress on a host of issues, but we also have significant challenges ahead.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is uncertainty in our economy, chaos at the federal level, and a meaningful number of departures from our executive teams. Ed is up to the task.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we get with Ed is not only a world-class municipal leader and innovator, but a person of high character who epitomizes what it means to be a servant leader,\u201d the mayor said. \u201cHe\u2019s also inspired a sense of public service, collaboration and care for community among all city employees.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hiring process debated<\/strong><\/p>\n While Gallego side-stepped the haste with which Zuercher was hired, even some of those who voted for him did not.<\/p>\n Hernandez, his harshest critic, said, \u201cThe fact that we are voting on this contract in such a rushed manner should be raising alarms for all of us.<\/p>\n \u201cThis process was rushed,\u201d she continued. \u201cThere was a lack of transparency and a disregard for our city staff, for unions, for our communities, and even for some of the members on this council.\u201d<\/p>\n Hernandez added, \u201cI have serious concerns for the impact of forcing this choice on the people of the city and onto city staff. This action is disrespectful to those employees of the city and disrespectful to city leadership, who also may have wanted to compete for this role.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI am confident that we could have found our next city manager among some of the amazing individuals working under Jeff Barton\u2019s leadership. We are shooting ourselves in the foot, and I am ashamed of this entire process.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite his criticism of that process, Robinson echoed Waring.<\/p>\n \u201cI think as Councilman Waring pointed out,\u201d Robinson said, \u201cwe\u2019ve had other processes for the top position in this city where there, the process was done rather quickly, without a whole lot of involvement by a lot of other groups, and sometimes, as others have said, that\u2019s the way it goes, where the elected officials were the elected body to make these types of decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd as I stated earlier,\u201d Robinson continued, \u201cI wasn\u2019t real excited about the process, but I get it. I think that\u2019s what it takes. Sometimes, especially in these positions, these leadership positions, sometimes you have to make a decision, sometimes you pivot a little bit. Sometimes you do what you think is the right thing to do, and in this situation it is.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Brien indicated another reason why the slim majority of council members turned to Zuercher.<\/p>\n She cited the departure of several major administration figures \u2013 including Water Services Manager Troy Hayes, Community and Economic Development Director Christine Mackay, Deputy City Manager John Chan and Assistant City Manager Inger Erickson.<\/p>\n They come at a time when Phoenix faces the possibility of an economic downturn aggravated by steep revenue losses and a looming 2026-27 budget deficit of more than $80 million, close to 600 empty police officer slots, and uncertainty about Phoenix\u2019s share of Colorado River water.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are saying goodbye to other key leaders with decades of experience and institutional knowledge,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cAt a time like this, we need a leader who can, can and will hit the ground running. That\u2019s why I believe Ed Zuercher is the right person for Phoenix.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Police allegations debated<\/strong><\/p>\n Hernandez, the South Phoenix representative who has been a strident critic of Phoenix Police since she took office in April, said Zuercher\u2019s earlier role as the ultimate boss of more than 14,500 city employees included presiding over the Phoenix Police Department during incidents that ultimately prompted a harsh report by the U.S. Justice Department under President Biden.<\/p>\n That report, which came out two years after Zuercher had retired, slammed the department for civil rights abuses and alleged unwarranted fatal shootings.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were multiple scandals involving law enforcement\u2026including violations of First Amendment rights at the Trump rally in 2016 civil rights violations during the 2020 uprisings, the fake gang charges against residents that were exercising their First Amendment rights,\u201d Hernandez told a stoic Zuercher standing at a podium before the council.<\/p>\n \u201cMy brother Alex was killed by a city of Phoenix police officer under your tenure and under your watch,\u201d she said, alluding to the 2019 shooting of her 19-year-old brother, who had pulled a toy gun on an officer.<\/p>\n \u201cMy concern is you left your role at a time when all of this was happening, and it sounds like we might be seeing the same return of some of those scandals unfolding,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Although the Trump Justice Department rescinded the report, Council has implemented dozens of new regulations to correct the practices that its predecessor had criticized.<\/p>\n And Zuercher didn\u2019t take Hernandez\u2019s allegations laying down.<\/p>\n \u201cI would say the Phoenix Police Department was recognized in 2016 by the Department of Justice as being one of the best trained police departments in the United States,\u201d he said, invoking the Obama Administration\u2019s endorsement.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then, as you noted, for the last half of the 2010s. we experienced in the country, waves of violence and incidents in the Phoenix, in Phoenix and other place.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe spent a lot of time in those in those years, working on reforms in training and tactics and policies with many of those things were changed along the way by 2020, and 2021,\u201d Zuercher continued.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then you mentioned the gang charges and others \u2013 I was the one who initiated the investigation of those things,\u201d he told Hernandez. \u201cI hired the outside law firm to come in and give us an investigation an independent view.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI took their recommendations and reports. I used those to administer discipline where I thought it was warranted, and we used it to begin many of the reforms that we are seeing today, and I would commend you on the reforms that you just heard last week and that Jeff and his team have been overseeing.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSo it was something we worked on every day,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was very concerning to me. I felt like we were addressing it along the way. These are, these are changes that have to be made over time and slowly. I take them very seriously, and I would want to continue the direction that the council and Jeff and his team have set for the continued reform and accountability of our public safety.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In an unusually testy session Sept. 17, Phoenix City Council rehired the city manager who retired four years…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":251173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,132989,123376,5643,1587,132986,126758,132988,132987,1589,94426,17042,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-251172","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ann-obrien","10":"tag-anna-hernandez","11":"tag-arizona","12":"tag-az","13":"tag-betty-guardado","14":"tag-ed-zuercher","15":"tag-kesha-hodge-washington","16":"tag-laura-pastor","17":"tag-phoenix","18":"tag-phoenix-city-manager","19":"tag-phoenix-police","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115259501776959183","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}