Council gives administrator high marks in evaluation

The Rhinelander Common Council conducted an employee performance evaluation of city administrator Patrick Reagan as part of its Nov. 25 meeting. The group spent approximately 40 minutes in closed session before emerging with a motion to extend additional hours of vacation to Reagan in 2025 “based on his high evaluation score of 3.4 out of 4,” city council president Carrie Mikalauski announced.

The council unanimously approved the motion.

No other information about the evaluation was released.

Reagan, a former city manager in Lake Odessa, Mich., started his tenure at City Hall on Feb. 6, 2023. He succeeded Zach Vruwink who served as administrator from March 2021 to October 2022, when he left to take a position with the League of Wisconsin Municipalities.

The city has a complicated history with regard to the administrator position, having employed four full-time administrators and two interim administrators in the 12 years before Vruwink took the job.

The first administrator, Bill Bell, served from 2008 to 2011 when he left to take a job in Colorado. He was succeeded by Blaine Oborn who was the city’s chief executive officer from 2011 to 2015. He left to take a job in Lake Geneva. 

Following Oborn’s departure, longtime city attorney Phil Parkinson served as interim administrator while the city searched for a new full-time administrator. That person turned out to be Kristina Aschenbrenner, who held the position from 2015 to 2016 when her contract was terminated.

Local attorney Keith Kost came on as an interim part-time administrator in February 2017, after the position sat vacant for approximately 5 months. Kost served until April 2018 when he quit just weeks after former mayor Chris Frederickson’s election. Former Village of Weston administrator Daniel Guild was Vruwink’s immediate predecessor. He was hired in September 2018 and placed on administrative leave just over a year later. The council voted to terminate his contract in May 2020.

Vruwink was originally hired as a consultant and then a temporary assistant to Frederickson, before being named city administrator.

Heather Schaefer may be reached at [email protected].