Calistoga City Manager performance under review
Last week, for the second time in two months, Calistoga’s City Council met in closed session for a performance evaluation of City Manager Laura Snideman. While neither of the review sessions turned up any actionable items, a meeting to continue last week’s council discussion is scheduled for Friday at 3 p.m.
Although the city manager position is subject to an annual performance review by the city council, Snideman’s last regular review, based on city documents, took place last year on June 12. The current sequence of off-cycle evaluations may be a sign of troubles brewing at City Hall.
Multiple council members confirmed that last Friday’s closed session lasted about four hours before the decision was made to reconvene this Friday.
While closed session discussions are confidential and protected from public disclosure, multiple councilmembers also confirmed to the Tribune that the meetings were triggered by a noticeable increase in emails to council members from members of the public, expressing various concerns regarding city management.
“There seems to be a drumroll getting louder and louder,” Councilmember Scott Cooper said. “(Emails) seem to have picked up in the past couple of months. It’s a variety of different concerns regarding the city governance in general, but the main point is concerning the city manager.”
Cooper confirmed this week that, during the Feb. 3 closed session, councilmembers directed City Attorney Michelle Kenyon to conduct a 360-degree performance review of the city manager. Typically, a 360 review is a comprehensive evaluation of an employee that solicits input from direct reports and other individuals whom the employee interacts with regularly.
The subsequent closed sessions last week and this week, Cooper said, are for the council to review and discuss the survey’s findings. He declined further comment.
When asked, councilmembers Lisa Gift and Kevin Eisenberg confirmed they had received at least 20 emails since the beginning of January from constituents voicing concerns about city management.
The Tribune has filed multiple record requests, the first on Feb. 28, for copies of email correspondence to council members, which are public record, but had not received any records as of press time on Wednesday. In one city response, the Tribune was told that preparing the documents for public release would likely take several months.
Officially, any actions taken by council during closed sessions are reported by the mayor at the next regular City Council meeting, in this case, on April 8.
The city declined to confirm whether a 360 review of Snideman was taking place and did not respond to further requests for comment on the matter in a response sent through Jed Matcham, city spokesperson and fire chief.
This is not the first time Snideman’s performance has come under scrutiny since she was hired in January 2022.
In August 2023, the City Council launched an investigation following a formal complaint from an unidentified city employee filed that July, alleging that Snideman had engaged in harassment and had fostered a hostile work environment at City Hall. That September, the city’s planning director, Jeff Mitchem, made similar accusations of improper behavior by city management in his letter of resignation.
In November 2023, following the months-long investigation, the City Council unanimously concluded the complaints that Snideman had fostered a hostile work environment were unfounded.
More recently, questions have been regularly raised – during public comment, in letters to the council and in letters to the Tribune – about the number of staff members hired to support city management.
Last July, the city hired both an assistant city manager, former police chief Mitch Celaya, and a deputy city manager, former Parks and Recreation Director Rachel Stepp. That same month, the council approved a $57,000 pay raise for Snideman.
Critics have argued that adding the two director-level positions is excessive for Calistoga, a city with a population of roughly 5,200.
A recent Tribune request for city employee records shows that the salaries, including benefits, for the city manager, assistant city manager and deputy city manager in the current fiscal year are $382,301, $345,651 and $280,674 respectively, totaling just over $1 million for the three positions. Additionally, the city manager’s executive assistant, Shannon Mattingly, has a salary and benefits totaling $96,699.
At last week’s council meeting, Snideman gave a presentation sharing an overview of her department as well as challenges she faced when she was hired, in the midst of what she called a “staffing crisis.” She outlined subsequent achievements filling the various positions in the city, which employs more than 100 people, 71 of whom are full-time.
During the presentation she shared the differences between the assistant and deputy city manager roles. Celaya, she explained, oversees the fire, police and human resource departments, as well as various council initiatives and city projects, while Stepp oversees the finance, fairgrounds, information technology and parks and recreation departments, as well as other special projects.
“I think that we have moved from a fragile to a more, what I’ll call, fully functional organization. We’re more resilient, we can be more flexible and nimble,” Snideman said at the meeting, adding that in her first couple of years, she was limited by significant staffing vacancies that created the fragile infrastructure.
“But now,” she told the Council, “With the structure and the team in place, I think we’re really poised to do a lot more in terms of trying to get your accomplishments done.”
