WCBU: Assistant city manager on way out?

January 22, 2007
By Billy Dennis

Jonathan Ahl says that the Peoria City Hall will consider eliminating the assistant city manager position.

This position has been around for only 2½ years, when then acting City Manager Bern Ewert created the position and filed the job with then-personnel director Alan Pennington, who soon left to take a job with a the Matrix Corporation, which Pennington himself helped hire to write a study on fire department staffing.

The person now holding this job, Craig Whitehead, earns $143,000 a year. Some members of the city council tell Ahl that Whitehead’s duties could easily be assumed by administrative assistants, while City Manager Randy Oliver says the position is vital.

Vital or superfluous, that’s a hefty salary that might be better applied to a couple rookie police officers.

Tags: , , , ,

This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.

3 Responses to “ WCBU: Assistant city manager on way out? ”

  1. prego man on January 23, 2007 at 8:50 am

    Maybe Whitehead could help out Haste to earn part of his salary… Lord knows a guy can only work so many 21 1/2 hour days.

  2. Peo Proud on January 23, 2007 at 9:19 am

    Actually, the position has been around for well over 15 years, maybe more, except for the years the Mike McKnight was City Manager. When he was promoted, he choose not to fill the vacancy. Other than that, it’s been in place for quite some time and has been existing for 3 1/2 years. And the position doesn’t earn $143,000 but costs $143,000 (those pesty benefit costs). Those little fact corrections aside – it would be interesting to see the report on the duties being performed.

    It’s extremely common for communities of this size to have an Assistant City Manager position – most department heads in the City also have Assistant DH positions to assist them – and there is no position with more responsibility than the City Manager. Perhaps, the real problem is the duties that are being performed or assigned to the individual.

    However, it is good to see the City Council looking at duties for positions. If only they would do this with all positions and not just a select few, we’d probably have the budget problems solved in no time.

  3. C. J. Summers on January 23, 2007 at 10:06 am

    What about the streets manager? When will he be on his way out?