From: herb
To: Council, City; Clerk, City
Subject: December 1, 2025 City Council Meeting, Agenda Item #19: City Manager Employment Agreement Date: Sunday, November 30, 2025 4:11:54 PM
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DECEMBER 1, 2025 CITY COUNCIL MEETING
AGENDA ITEM #19: CITY MANAGER EMPLOYMENT AGREEMENT
When the City Council appointed Ed Shikada as City Manager, no search process had been conducted for the position.
As reported in the Palo Alto Weekly at that time, when the City Council appointed Shikada's predecessor James Keene, there were 42 applicants, six semi-finalists, several interview panels, and three finalists.
Council Member Tom Dubois said of Shikada's appointment, "There could still be an opportunity for the public to comment and weigh in when we do goals and performance reviews and setting criteria for evaluating the city manager." (See "Ed Shikada named next city manager" by Gennady Sheyner in Palo Alto Weekly
of June 29, 2018, at pages 5 and 8.)
Now that the results of the City Council's annual review of the City Manager's performance have been completed, the Council still resists making public the Goals and Key Performance Indicators that they use to evaluate the City Manager's performance; the annual amendment for each Council Appointed Officer's compensation is being proposed five months after the fiscal year has started; and amendments to their employment agreements are placed at the end of a long meeting agenda following a long holiday weekend.
Should the public and press just assume that whatever opinions they have of the performance of the City Manager and the other Council Appointed Officers are not really about those
employees, but that those employees are doing exactly what the City Council wants them to do, and that the opinions of the public and press about those officers performance are really opinions about the performance of the City Council?
Thank you for your consideration of these comments.
Herb Borock