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GREENSBORO — Look closely, and you'll catch a theme running through this council term:

Some council members deeply mistrust City Manager Mitchell Johnson, and that bumpy relationship exacerbates a philosophical difference about the way council members should govern the city.

In that atmosphere, typically mundane tasks such as passing a consent agenda can turn into debates. And perhaps the most important question - should the city manager keep his job - lingers.

Even the council's moderates seem at a loss to repair the conflict. And that means meetings run late into the night because of roiling debates that sometimes become chaotic, with members talking over each other or making faces.

It means the issue of the manager's job keeps bubbling up, as it is likely to do tonight when council members meet in closed session to perform his annual evaluation.

"With some people, it's not resolvable. This is just a split," Mayor Yvonne Johnson said.

Mitchell Johnson admits to have "dropped a few balls here and there," he wrote in his personal evaluation. But he thinks he and the staff are doing a good job.

"I want to serve all members of council...I don't know that I am always successful. You are dealing with nine different bosses and they don't all agree," Mitchell Johnson said.

New council, old issues

Voters last year elected a new mayor and four new City Council members, including former county Commissioners Trudy Wade and Mary Rakestraw, who went into office with skepticism about the manager.

Mitchell Johnson became a community lightning rod in 2006, when the rookie city manager locked David Wray, the police chief at the time, out of his office.

Johnson was investigating complaints that the department targeted its own black police officers.

"He inherited a mess. He tried to do what is right or fair," Mayor Johnson said.

By state statute and professional code, the manager's job is to run the day-to-day operations of Greensboro, oversee the professional staff and act out the will of the City Council.

It's a tall order. It's tougher when the City Council doesn't always agree on a vision. The manager learned that a few short months into the current term.

In February, the weekly Rhinoceros Times published a memo about the black book, a photo lineup used to investigate black police officers and a point of contention in the controversy surrounding Wray.

Rakestraw said she asked whether there was information that accompanied the black book and was told no. She felt she had been lied to by Mitchell Johnson and called for his job.

The manager claimed it was an error, not a purposeful deception.

The council split over the issue and ultimately reached a compromise to ask the manager to come up with a plan to address problems in city departments, to reorganize his office and to improve communications. He wrote a 10-page memo explaining how he would accomplish the goals.

But council members never met with Mitchell Johnson to discuss the content of his plan. And they never reviewed whether he was accomplishing the things he promised.

The questions about his competency died down. But the debate never went away.

Lingering difficulty

Scuffles between some council members and the manager continued throughout the year.

Wade and Rakestraw complained Mitchell Johnson and the staff did not give them the information they needed to make good decisions, such as details of the ongoing police officer discrimination complaints against the city.

"It's been like pulling teeth trying to get some information," Rakestraw said recently.

Mitchell Johnson didn't always give council members what they wanted, when they wanted it, but he did hire staff to keep up with the unprecedented requests for information.

Barber was disappointed with the way Mitchell Johnson handled the financial crisis.

Barber worried the manager's plan to cut back city spending would sink the bond referendums. And he was upset that Johnson launched a cost-saving plan just as Barber planned to put forward his own ideas.

Johnson said he did what he thought was right given the growing financial problems.

Other council members defended Johnson or downplayed the complaints.

But other issues crept up.

Recently, the names of the 39 police officers involved in discrimination complaints against the city were released through a public records request and were published, even though that type of complaint is confidential.

Johnson told one of the officers involved that the names were released to a reporter in a stack of documents also requested by Wade. The officers later complained about the incident to the district attorney.

Wade felt targeted by Johnson and questioned why her name would have even come up in the conversation since the document was released by the clerk's office.

Johnson said he was not "throwing anybody under the bus." He said the release of the names was a mistake on the part of the city. The district attorney chose not to call for any investigation.

But the incident has steeled Wade's resolve that the manager should go.

"I was ready for a change. I hadn't changed my mind after having worked with him," she said.

Handling the rift

To some council members, Johnson's hiccups amount to a pattern of incompetence that means he should be replaced.

Other members see him as a man doing the best he can in a difficult situation.

"Mitch is trying, but it's hard to follow the direction when you've got a couple directions to go in," Councilwoman Sandra Anderson Groat said earlier this fall.

Some council members have defended Johnson, especially recently when his personal statement about his accomplishments for the year - part of a planned annual evaluation of the manager - was leaked.

Councilman Robbie Perkins called the leak "a concerted and planned effort to discredit the manager."

No one admitted to releasing the document. But it exemplified a broken trust.

"It seems like every time we go into closed session ... somebody is leaking that information," Councilwoman Goldie Wells said.

"Someone is not holding fast to our commitment."

Philosophical differences

On some level, the conflict comes down to a question of who should be running the show.

Wade says she wants a council-run government. Barber has argued council should set policies the manager should follow.

Other council members have said they want to trust the professional advice of the city staff and the manager.

"Some people want to micromanage," Yvonne Johnson said. "I want to give directions, and I want to determine how well the directions are followed."

When complaints get loud, some council members ignore them, counting on five votes to squash debates.

"The core of the council is going to have to determine what we do," Perkins said after a particularly contentious discussion, "and just ignore the extraneous stuff."

Contact Amanda Lehmert at 373-7075 or amanda.lehmert@news-record.com