Healy Testifies in Public Evaluation

What is it like to lead a politically divided city council? Not too easy, said Cambridge City Manager Robert W. Healy last night at a final round of his public evaluation.

"The tight rope that a manager must walk when dealing with a divided council does not make anybody's life easy," Healy said.

The council is divided five to four between independents, who back Healy, and Cambridge Civic Association councillors, who are more critical of the manager.

James C. Pritchard, an outside consultant who was overseeing the evaluation process, suggested the council consider the sharp opinion splits he had found in the evaluations submitted by the councillors.

Pritchard compiled the councillors' anonymous written and oral comments as well as their numerical ratings of the manager on a variety of issues. Ratings were on a scale of one to five, with one being the highest.

The split was evident on the issues of leadership, financial management, relationship to the public and personal qualities. Four councillors gave Healy scores of one and the others were distributed among lower scores.

On the issues of decision making, personnel management, and relationships with the city council and other officials and agencies, the councillors were about evenly distributed in their ratings. However, the four-five split occurred in several sub-topics.

By the time the manager was invited to come into the meeting, the councillors had already argued over how the split should be accounted for when analyzing the evaluation of the manager.

Councillor Edward N. Cyr said, "I might hazard a guess as to how the councillors split, but it might be pretty obvious."

Despite the fact that partisan issues were on everybody's mind, how- ever, Pritchard stressed the constructive developments that could come of the meeting.

"Tonight is not about contract renewal", Pritchard said at the meeting.

So the meeting became a stroll down memory lane, as the councillors reviewed the events of the past several years and their expectations for the future. Many of the topics that have always caused friction within the city government were discussed, including the state of the Inspectional Services Department and the Board of Zoning Appeals.

Issues from the termination of city officials not performing up to expectations to the need for the manager and council not to contradict each other publicly were rehashed

"Tonight is not about contract renewal", Pritchard said at the meeting.

So the meeting became a stroll down memory lane, as the councillors reviewed the events of the past several years and their expectations for the future. Many of the topics that have always caused friction within the city government were discussed, including the state of the Inspectional Services Department and the Board of Zoning Appeals.

Issues from the termination of city officials not performing up to expectations to the need for the manager and council not to contradict each other publicly were rehashed