Greeley City Councilman Ed Clark votes against new city manager’s contract

By Trenton Sperry

The details of newly appointed City Manager Raymond Lee III’s contract were made public Tuesday night. The annual financial impact to the city is $372,121, but let’s break that down:

• Base salary: $260,740

• 401(k) contribution: $26,074

• Car allowance: $600 per month, or $7,200 per year

• Relocation expenses: Up to $6,000

• Temporary housing: Up to $4,000

• Other benefits and city costs: $68,000

Among the costs of Lee’s contract: Attendance at and membership in the International City Managers Association and the Colorado Municipal League, as well as the National Forum for Black Public Administrators. Lee is Greeley’s first Black city manager.

The council voted 5-1 in favor of agreeing to Lee’s contract. At-large Councilman Ed Clark was the lone no vote. Ward I Councilman Tommy Butler was absent Tuesday night, although he told The NoCo Optimist he would have voted in favor of the contract had he been in attendance.

Previous City Manager Roy Otto finished out his time with the city at a base salary of $246,503, which makes Lee’s base salary a 5.78% increase over Otto’s. That increase was one thing Clark said he wishes the council would have taken the time to discuss more ahead of Tuesday’s meeting.

“I wasn’t comfortable with the fact that the council members didn’t sit down and frame a contract together,” Clark told The NoCo Optimist after the meeting. “We didn’t sit down together when the contract was put together before we sent it to Raymond. We didn’t sit down together when we got it back from Raymond.

“There was no help from city staff with regard to comparable (salaries for city managers), or I didn’t see that. I didn’t have any interaction with city staff with regards to the contract.”

Clark made clear his qualms were with the contract and the process of its adoption and not with Lee, whom Clark called “a shrewd negotiator.”

“Sometimes you get seven to 10 to 12 things in a contract,” he said. “You could talk about car allowance, you could talk about salary, you could talk about (Lee) being the same as a 21-year employee with regards to time off. Maybe the contract stays the same after those conversations, and maybe it doesn’t. But we don’t know because we didn’t get to have those conversations.

“As council members, we’re elected to have that conversation, so we should be having it. … I asked on a couple of occasions for that opportunity to sit down and talk about this, and that just didn’t happen.”