Loveland’s City Manager, Don Williams, is fond of telling people this has been the most difficult council to manage in the years since he was promoted to city manager.
LovelandPolitics has learned that complaints by City Councilwoman Carol Johnson who compares him constantly with Mike Bestor, her previous city manager while serving on the Golden City Council, are getting under his skin. She has even taken her concerns to Todd Gamble, Loveland’s Director of Human Resources.
Poor Job References?
They say a good reputation follows you and a bad one goes ahead of you. This may be why Johnson can’t seem to connect with organizations in the community who she apparently believes would love to put a city councilmember on the payroll. Rejected for jobs at both McWhinney Enterprises and more recently Loveland’s Chamber of Commerce, Johnson is smarting from the rejections.
It is unlikely that Williams would have done anything overt to disqualify her for the positions but private talk and complaints to friends on the golf course can also impact a candidate’s probability of success. Williams, like Johnson, tend to prefer keeping their objections private so his views are closely held.
Williams, for his part, has played the rejection coolly by meeting with Johnson only when he must and telling her only what he has to tell her. He is also reluctant to support the many Golden copycat ideas she wants to implement for Loveland’s downtown.
Nonetheless, her efforts to convince colleagues and staff alike that Williams lacks the credentials to be city manager has only created a bigger rift between them. While we question Williams’ value to the city (as he is more worried about serving the interest of developers near I-25 than the residents of the community) we also think he doesn’t deserve the destructive backdoor gossip Johnson appears to be engaging in to undermine his authority.
Williams has created a culture of secrecy where the most important decisions are made privately instead of in public. Johnson appears to be giving him a taste of his own medicine and he doesn’t like it.
Please feel free to post any comments below – especially if you are named in this story.
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As Nope calls us the -
“Whiny pissant ….. clowns that run this illiterate blog”
Well I’m tickled to death to hear someone else is thinking it’s time to say Buh-Bye to Don Williams..
No I’ve never applied at the Chamber or McWhinney. However, I have lived outside of Loveland. The first thing I noticed when I moved to Loveland from Castlerock, Colorado was the slant towards McWhinney by the Loveland City Managers office & Council.
I’m sorry guy’s that just won’t fly with me!
The city is hurting, we need development in central Loveland !
I see our currant relationship with McWhinney as very inappropriate, evan slimmy.
So, part of the mend would start by cleaning up our city hall. While I’ve never been a huge supporter of Carol Johnson’s voting record, I think she is correct, a change in the City Managers office must happen.
Loveland has been heading towards the Suburban mindset, not the Urban mindset. We need to fix that. I didn’t move to Loveland to see it turn into another Aurora.
Yeah, I agree. Better the official willing to work for change and improve the system than the ones who say they want change but do nothing.
Go Carol!!
Keeping that guy employed in this city is criminal. When is he going to step down in shame and go somewhere else to live?
Well they are at it again. More for McWhinneys and nothing for those of us who are paying all those darn taxes.
When will people in this town wake-up and throw the bums and liars out on their keesters. David Clark is just a small town boy who loves to be wined and dined by McWhinney.
Does he really think they are not making a profit? I want to know why their profit numbers are being kept private. If they expect the public to fund their projects with public debt because they say it doesn’t work without all these subsidies why can’t they open their books?
What a great ballot measure that would be – McWhinney report your earnings like anybody on the stock exchange has to do.
We must have the most naive council in the whole country. How can they make desicions completely relying on some publicity stunt or comment about how they can’t do the project without a subsidy. Why can’t they ask McWhinney to share the numbers on other projects we already subsidized to see how much is in Chad’s pocket?
Someday when professional management comes to Loveland and this mess is cleaned-up people will be asking why they didn’t protest earlier.
Oh well, as long as McWhinney says there is trouble in River City, the longer the city council will use taxes to buy us musical instruments.
The city of Loveland actually has over 700 million dollars in the bank and has made a large amount of revenue so far this year (2009). In case no one has mentioned it, the city manager is trying to get the police chief to cut anywhere between 5% to 10% of the police officer jobs. We are talking about 3-13 police officer off the streets! If the citizens living in Loveland like being safe and want to be responded to quickly in an emergency situation, they need to sound off and stand up for these officers’ jobs! If you get rid of law enforcement officers, you will have lawlessness and things go really bad. You can’t risk it in this day and age! Tell the City manager to cut costs in other areas, like sculptures, golf-courses, U-tube sites, etc….. The citizens need to be aware that their safety is at risk and the city they so adore will turn to crap. If you don’t believe me research what happened in Grand Junction, Colorado with the same situtaion and a bad city manager.