City Manager Keith Stahley is bogged down with day-to-day issues and doesn’t effectively tell other city employees about his decisions, leading to an inefficient city government that fails to set priorities. That’s according to a Dec. 3 draft performance audit of Salem’s executive leaders by the consulting firm Moss Adams. The report describes Stahley as using unclear criteria to decide city matters, sometimes without involving or communicating to city employees, and ineffectively leading the 12 people he directly manages. It paints a picture of a city government that often has high-level managers reacting to minor issues or hashing out concerns in lengthy meetings while priorities like addressing homelessness or communicating clearly with the public falter. READ IT: City of Salem Enterprise Leadership Draft Performance Audit Rather than try to do less as the city has faced budget constraints, city leaders have continued to add to their own workloads as well as those of employees, combining jobs and treating everything with urgency instead of focusing on specific goals. A finance committee of four city councilors commissioned the report in the fall as part of a larger effort to review efficiencies in city government as Salem faces an $18 million budget deficit. They acted after city polling showed likely Salem voters held a substantial distrust of city government. The report was based on interviews with city leaders, employees and city councilors. It doesn’t detail how the city’s internal issues impact services to residents. The draft was released to Salem Reporter in response to a public records request. Stahley said he forwarded the draft to top city executives and city councilors for review. Critics of city leadership, including Mayor-elect Julie Hoy and local business executives, have repeatedly called for city executives to evaluate their own performances and look for efficiencies before asking Salem residents to pay higher taxes for city services. The report makes nine recommendations for improving city government, including better tracking priorities, establishing clear guidelines for meetings of city leaders, assessing workloads for people who report to the city manager and developing a framework for making and communicating decisions. Stahley said in an interview Thursday that he was still digesting the report but welcomed the critical feedback. “Anytime you get feedback, the people who are speaking it, that is their truth. And you’ve got to take that in and respond to it, and deal with it,” Stahley said. “Whether it was one person or it was a dozen people, it was the reality of the way people were seeing particular aspects of my work and the city’s work. It is an opportunity for us as a leadership team to say, ‘OK, how do we come back together? How do we move forward with this input?’”  A final report will be sent to city leaders in January. Stahley said it will include key context on the city as an organization and also provide detail about best practices. Stahley said he would wait until the final report to implement changes, in part because of the holidays and the incoming shift in city leadership as Julie Hoy prepares to take office in January.  “This isn’t the kind of stuff you want to sit on for a long period of time, this is of the moment,” Stahley said. “We are going to try to respond to it as quickly as we can.”  The report’s nine findings suggest that understaffing across the city contributes to high employee workloads, jobs that combine multiple responsibilities and leaders taking on tasks that should be handled by lower-level employees.  City leaders and employees are heavily focused on service to both residents and the city council “despite significant budget deficits,” the report noted. “Notably, because all work is taken up with high urgency, no work stands out as a main focus or core to achieving the city’s vision,” the draft said. City leaders addressed understaffing by moving more people to the city manager’s office and essentially expecting people in leadership roles to pick up slack when positions are vacant or cut. “City leaders are often in the weeds on operations and have a limited ability to operate more strategically,” the report said. The result is a city government that’s often reactive, treating even minor issues raised by individual citizens as urgent priorities and failing to identify or track progress toward key city goals. The city has no system to track questions or issues raised by residents, meaning several city employees sometimes spend time tracking down the same information. There’s also no city system to track initiatives and monitor progress and costs. “Inefficiencies in the management of constituent requests result in excessive staff time dedicated to managing niche concerns and contribute to the overburdened workload of city staff,” the report said. But the report also identifies Stahley’s decision-making style as an issue, saying he often acts independently and doesn’t always communicate decisions clearly across the city. “Some leaders shared that they are not consistently aware of decisions that are made or new initiatives that are adopted which may impact their role. This can disrupt city operations and contribute to staff burnout, particularly if decisions are made without staff knowledge or input,” the report said. Stahley came to Salem in the fall of 2022 after serving as assistant city manager in Olympia, Washington. He is the city’s chief executive, responsible for overseeing day-to-day city operations under direction of the elected city council. He began work as Salem was facing a growing budget deficit and city employees for years had complained of excessive workloads and understaffing. Among his first actions as city manager was reorganizing the city’s top leadership, hiring two deputies and reorganizing several city agencies into a new community services department. Salem’s fire and police chiefs, public works and community planning directors, city attorney, strategic initiatives manager and homelessness liaison, as well as two assistants, report directly to Stahley. Council President Linda Nishioka said her main takeaway from the draft is that addressing the city’s organizational weaknesses  requires more employees. “All I got from this was that we are understaffed. So that is not going to help our budget, but it does make it clear to us that we need to support this team more,” she said. She said reading the report gave her even more appreciation for what city staff do on a daily basis.  “I think Keith is pretty stressed. He has a lot that he has to do. When he came on and he switched it up to have the two deputy city managers, I was so pleased to hear that, because I felt that would maybe give him a little bit of breathing room,” Nishioka said.  Other findings in the report include: Stahley’s leadership team convenes for weekly two-hour meetings that often lack a clear agenda or direction. Leaders sometimes rehash discussions because it’s unclear if a decision was reached at a prior meeting. City councilors, who are volunteers and often hold other full-time jobs, don’t have sufficient time to review reports and information prior to council sessions. That contributes to discussions being longer and delving into details instead of focusing on setting priorities for Salem. Salem lacks a city-wide communications strategy or person to manage communication with the public and within the city. A city communications manager position in Stahley’s office has been vacant since September, when Elizabeth Kennedy-Wong abruptly left the city. The result is city employees and the public often hear about decisions directly from Stahley and sometimes receive wrong information. City efforts to address homelessness suffer because a single person, Gretchen Bennett, is responsible for overseeing city efforts while also managing the city’s human rights commission and compliance with federal laws. While she technically reports to the city manager, Bennett’s office is in another department, which makes it more difficult for her to be aware of citywide initiatives and efforts. An executive assistant who is supposed to work with the mayor half-time instead spends a majority of the day managing the city’s other boards and commissions and constituents. Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241. Contact reporter Joe Siess: [email protected] or 503-335-7790. A MOMENT MORE, PLEASE – If you found this story useful, consider subscribing to Salem Reporter if you don’t already. 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