The One Review Broomfield Residents Never Get to See

On October 30, Broomfield's City Council will convene an executive session to evaluate the performance of three people who run more of the city's daily life than any elected official on the dais: the City and County Manager, the City and County Attorney, and the Presiding Judge. Council may also discuss amending their contracts. None of it will be public. That is entirely legal. It is also the wrong way to handle it. At minimum, residents deserve a public summary of what the city's top officials were judged on and how they measured up.

Consider what these three positions actually do. The City and County Manager oversees the departments that decide budgets, run the fee schedules families pay at the recreation center, and manage utilities during a drought. The City and County Attorney advises on every ordinance that reaches council, and on high-stakes negotiations like the ongoing Broomfield Town Square redevelopment talks. The Presiding Judge decides real cases with real consequences for residents who end up in municipal court over tickets, disputes, or code violations. None of them face voters. All three shape nearly everything on this fall's crowded council agenda, from land-use ordinances to housing policy to how the city spends public money.

Now set that against the rest of the council's calendar this year. Public hearings were held on the lodging tax increase. Public debate covered waterline agreements, hospital site plans, e-bike regulations, and a flag policy allowing POW/MIA banners on city poles. Council even took public comment on declaring November 28 Small Business Saturday. Nearly every item that touches city life, however minor, runs through the same open, documented process. Then the one evaluation that concerns the city's three most powerful unelected officials disappears behind the single legal mechanism designed to exclude the public entirely. That asymmetry is worth questioning, even if no one involved has done anything wrong.

The defense is straightforward and not unreasonable. Colorado's open meetings law explicitly permits executive sessions for personnel matters, and most municipalities nationwide handle senior staff reviews the same way. There are legitimate reasons for that: protecting an employee from having routine friction or preliminary feedback aired publicly, and allowing council members to speak candidly rather than performing for an audience. This is standard practice, not scandal. But standard practice built to shield individual employees during ordinary hiring and disciplinary matters is not obviously the right frame for evaluating the three people who collectively steer city operations, city legal strategy, and the local court. Their jobs are structurally different from a typical personnel file, and the process built around them should reflect that difference.

There is a reasonable middle path, and Broomfield does not need to invent it. Some Colorado municipalities already release a short public statement after an annual manager review: whether the contract changed, which direction compensation moved, and whether council found the official's performance satisfactory. None of that requires exposing the substance of internal deliberation or embarrassing anyone in public. It simply confirms, in a sentence or two, that oversight happened and what it produced. Broomfield could adopt that habit for all three positions this fall without amending state law or weakening the protections executive sessions are meant to provide.

This matters now more than it might in a quieter year. Broomfield is asking residents to trust it with a lot in 2026: a lodging tax increase, new development fees, land-use ordinances, and a ballot question that could redraw how long a mayor serves. Trust in local government is built less by the big, visible votes than by whether the small, procedural machinery is visible too. A closed personnel review for three of the city's most consequential employees is exactly the kind of low-attention, high-consequence moment where a modest gesture toward disclosure costs the city nothing and buys real credibility.

Council does not need to open the room. It needs to open the outcome. A short public statement after October 30 confirming what changed and why would cost nothing and would quietly answer a question residents shouldn't have to ask in the first place: who is actually watching the people who run the city, and what did they find.