Five city councillors will write Fidel Maltez’s report card this fall. Council President Roberto Jimenez-Rivera announced the annual City Manager Evaluation Committee in a letter on tonight’s agenda: Councillor Todd Taylor of District 1 as chair, with Tanairi Garcia, Lisa Santagate, Giovanni Recupero and Calvin Brown.
What the charter requires
Chelsea’s charter puts the City Manager, not an elected mayor, in charge of running the city, and the council hires and can fire him. Section 4-8 of the charter, and the City Manager’s employment contract, require the council “to prepare and deliver to the City Manager a written evaluation of their performance on an annual basis.” Rule 7 of the council’s own rules lets the President name the committee that does the work. Jimenez-Rivera writes that he trusts the members “will perform the task ably,” and that he looks forward “to reviewing the full report once the Committee has completed its work.”
The letter does not set a deadline, say whether the finished evaluation will be public, or say what last year’s evaluation concluded. No prior evaluation appears in any council packet this year. The evaluation is the one formal moment each year when the council states, in writing, what it thinks of the person it employs to run a city with a $272 million budget.
Who is on it
The five are not a bloc. On the biggest split vote of the year, the 6-to-5 amendment in June that set the affordable housing fee at $275,000 per unit, Recupero, Garcia and Santagate voted yes and Taylor and Brown voted no.
Recupero has been the council’s most persistent critic of the administration’s transparency. In January he won passage of an order demanding a master list of department heads’ work cell phone numbers. Maltez’s written response in February did not include the list; it described the administration’s commitment to responsiveness and pointed councillors to the Director of Constituent Services. In March, Recupero filed an order directing the Council President to find an attorney the council could consult for legal opinions independent of the City Solicitor. The minutes since do not record any action on it.
Taylor’s term runs through 2027. Brown missed the special meeting in March and the regular meeting in May and was among the five who opposed the housing amendment.
The year they are grading
Maltez himself has acknowledged the friction. His request tonight to create a Chief Economic Development Officer opens with the admission that “at the conclusion of FY2026, it became very clear that the City Council is seeking greater clarity, accountability, and effectiveness in how the City manages and advances economic development opportunities.” The council spent the spring rejecting the first version of his housing ordinance and watching free cash fall from $32.4 million toward $5 million. His own five-year forecast shows deficits beginning in 2028.
The committee’s report will go to Jimenez-Rivera. Whether the public sees it is up to the council. The meeting starts at 7 p.m. at City Hall.