Ott shuffles staff for meet-and-confer team assignments

City Manager Marc Ott is rearranging the executive staff to free up several top-level city employees to work full-time on the meet-and-confer agreements with the unions representing police, fire, and EMS personnel. In a memo announcing the staff changes, Ott said the goal is to have those contract negotiations completed by this September.

Assistant City Manager Michael McDonald, a former Assistant Police Chief, will lead the effort. He is being placed on temporary special assignment to lead the city’s core team of negotiators working on contracts with the Austin Police Association, Austin Firefighters Association. Austin/Travis County EMS Employees Association, and the Austin Public Safety Officers’ Association. He will be joined by Anita Stevenson of the law department, Sylvia Gonzales of APD, and Bruce Mills, Director of the Public Safety and Emergency Management Department.

 

To step in for Mills, Ott has chosen the department’s Assistant Director, Sean Shepard. He will serve as Acting Director of PSEM. Assistant City Manager Bert Lumbreras will take over supervision of the public safety departments that McDonald has overseen. Since that duty will pull him away from her oversight of the Community Care Services Departments, including Health and Human Services, Parks and Recreation, and the Library Department. Health and Human Services Director David Lurie will assume the position of Acting Assistant City Manager over those departments.