Inglewood OKs 4-Year Contract for City Manager

The Inglewood City Council on Tuesday extended City Manager Paul Eckles’ contract for four years but rejected controversial severance provisions that would have made it easier, but costlier, for the council to fire him.

Eckles had proposed the beefed-up severance pay in February, saying he and other top executives feared that their jobs might be threatened if the council followed through on suggestions to restructure city government. The suggestions had been made by some council members, who expressed concerns that the city staff is overwhelmingly white, whereas the city’s population is 50% black and 38% Latino.

The manager’s proposal would have doubled his salary for the final five months and provided more than $120,000 in other severance benefits if the council were to fire him. Eckles earns $120,000 yearly under the current contract.

In exchange for the severance pay, Eckles offered to make it easier to remove him from office by requiring three votes, instead of four, of the five-member council for his ouster.

The council’s counteroffer, approved unanimously with Councilman Daniel Tabor absent, is similar to Eckles’ current working agreement. If signed by Eckles, the 50-month agreement would provide him with a 5% pay increase in each of the next four years, along with annual cost-of-living increases based on the consumer price index. As with his current contract, if Eckles is fired, he will receive a lump sum severance payment of one week’s salary for every four months of service with the city. That would exceed $120,000 if he were fired this year.

Eckles had also proposed contracts for two other longtime city executives, City Atty. Howard Rosten and Assistant City Manager Norman Cravens. Rosten, a 20-year veteran with the city, has a current salary of $118,150, and Cravens, hired 10 years ago, earns $101,764. Under Eckles’ proposal, they would have given up their Civil Service protection in exchange for increased severance benefits. The council decided to consider their contracts separately.

Eckles, who has been city manager for 15 years, was out of the country and could not be reached for comment on the council’s counteroffer.

He made his severance pay proposal in February, because of a concern that council members were seeking to expand the council’s authority in running the city. Councilman Garland Hardeman, for instance, has proposed that council members be assigned to committees that would oversee various city operations.

“Recent events have generated open speculation that a majority of the City Council might someday wish to make major changes in form and staffing of Inglewood city government,” Eckles wrote in the memo to the council. “. . . The future seems uncertain. This is unsettling for city government. It is destabilizing.

“In these circumstances career professionals start working on their resumes,” Eckles added.

Eckles’ proposal was harshly criticized by residents at the last two council meetings. They argued that the city manager already receives a generous salary. Council members also questioned the proposal, because they said it gave Eckles an incentive to leave the city rather than stay.

Supporters of Eckles say he has provided continuity in a city that has seen sweeping population changes and regular rotations on the City Council over the past 15 years.

In recent years, Tabor and Hardeman have questioned the power that Eckles and other top executives, who are white, have in running the predominantly black and Latino city. Both say, however, that they are not seeking Eckles’ ouster.

Eckles joined the city of Inglewood in 1973 as assistant city manager and became city manager two years later when the council fired Douglas Ayres.

The manager’s current contract expires in January, 1992, but it is the council’s policy to renew the city manager’s contract nine to 12 months before the expiration date, city officials said.