George “Skip” Noe’s job is safe for now, but the Aurora city manager may want to think twice before ordering any 2016 season tickets.

Aurora city council members pushing for his resignation agreed to drop the issue — at least temporarily — after nobody budged during Monday’s executive session. Despite a series of closed meetings on complaints about his job performance from five council members, Noe continues to come out on the winning side of a 6-5 split.

“We couldn’t come to any kind of compromise, so we just said, ‘We’re weary at this point. We’re so over this. We want to get back to the city’s business,’” said council member Sally Mounier, who opposes Noe. “And so we just basically said, ‘Okay, all right.’ It was going absolutely nowhere. You could feel it.”

Added council member Barbara Cleland: “We didn’t have the votes. But I wouldn’t say it’s over.”

Indeed, Noe is rapidly emerging as a campaign issue as the Nov. 3 city election looms. Mayor Steve Hogan and three council members face reelection bids, while another two — Bob Broom and Molly Markert — are term-limited.

That means the coalitions for and against Noe could shift drastically, depending on the ballot results. What’s more, Markert, who wants to see the city manager step down, is considering running for mayor against Hogan, who has been the tie-breaking vote in Noe’s favor.

Hired by the council in 2010, Noe has been honored for his work as city manager, most recently being named Man of the Year by the Aurora Chamber of Commerce. But his detractors have called him high-handed and condescending, saying he has hurt their ability to respond to community concerns after ordering constituent service requests to be funneled through his office.

Markert said she will make a final decision on a mayoral run by June 1, but she’s already sounding like a candidate, raising questions about Hogan’s leadership during the brouhaha.

“That should give Skip and Steve time to wake up and smell the coffee,” Markert said in a text. “If one learns to lead and the other learns to follow, we might get somewhere!”

Following Monday’s executive session, she criticized Noe for allowing the division to fester instead of resolving it by stepping aside, saying, “The good of the city has to come before the manager’s feelings.”

“He prefers to let his ego and need to be right get in the way of the mayor’s ability to lead and the council’s ability to work together,” Markert said. “So be it. Now when he maneuvers his shenanigans in my ward, there will be a whole lot more people watching than just me, and we don’t forget easily.”

Noe’s supporters on the council praise the city manager’s performance and insist they haven’t seen evidence of the criticism leveled against him.

“I support the city manager. I think he’s doing a good job, but there are people who are dissatisfied with him,” Broom said.

Those in Noe’s corner say they’re frustrated that the debate has gone public, saying that it should have been handled as an internal personnel matter. Hogan acknowledges that he and Noe sometimes disagree, but they’ve always been able to work out their differences in private.

“I think it is a matter of working through our internal relationships with council as much as anything,” Hogan said prior to Monday’s executive session. “There were concerns from some council members to other council members that just didn’t listen to me — those things need to be addressed internally with council before anything.”

Noe has declined to comment publicly on specific allegations, but he issued a statement April 9 saying that he was “committed to supporting the important work they [council members] do to benefit the residents we serve.”

“The newspaper reports include accusations that I have mistreated specific council members — yelling at and mistreating them — and that I have treated the female members differently from the male members of the Council,” Noe said. “I treat and value all people equally and, as I have said repeatedly in the past, these allegations are not accurate.”

All five of the council members who oppose Noe are women, but four of the five also represent wards, as opposed to being elected at-large. Those elected from wards tend to be more involved with constituent service within their regions, say council members.

“The concerns that I have had were never about being treated differently because I am a woman,” said council member Renie Peterson in an email. “My concerns were about information and waivers relevant to Ward II.”

Noe defended himself in his statement, saying, “I like my work and I think I’m good at it,” but also said he was open to change, stating, “I recognize that resolving interpersonal conflicts takes work and commitment by all those involved — and that commitment is one I am willing to make.”

“Let me say that if I created the impression that I slighted any member of the Council, I feel badly and want to assure that this was not my intent,” Noe said. “I have expressed that sentiment to council members individually in private in the past and want to address any misconceptions that may have been created.”

Mounier says the problem is rooted in more than misconceptions. She recalled a meeting with him over a year ago in which she challenged his system of moving constituent requests through his office, pointing to her long career in public service.

“I am explaining to him that he doesn’t have to worry about me, that I know how to do constituent work, I know how to follow up, and I’m really good at this,” Mounier said. “So while I’m telling him this, he interrupts me and says, ‘Sally, you are not the queen of your ward.’ Queen. I was stunned.”

“So I shot right back at him, ‘Well, you’re not king of the city. And immediately he says, ‘Oh, yes I am.’ So there you have it. We’ve got a city manager who thinks he’s king,” Mounier said.

Cleland said she got nowhere with Noe late last year after making a request for a cold-weather plan for the city.

“I never got a response from him. I ended up taking it to a committee to try and see if I could get some kind of response,” Cleland said. “And now because of the process that I went through, I may get a plan or something by this fall. But I did not hear from him at all.”

While she hopes that she and Noe can work together more productively in the future, she’s not willing to bet the house on it.

“I truly don’t know if he’s going to be accommodating or if he’s going to treat us differently,” Cleland said. “He may treat us with a lot more disdain than he has in the past. As may some of the council members.”

The rift has rocked city hall in a community widely recognized for its well-run city government. In his statement, Noe said that “we have a great team and not only is city business being done every day, we are excelling at it.”

“That is validated by not only the long list of accomplishments on Council’s priorities, but the national independent rankings that Aurora continues to accumulate,” he said.

Whatever happens in November, council members said they would live the results, even if it means agreeing to disagree on Noe’s future.

“I have great faith in the voters. I will live with whatever we get,” Mounier said. “And I will work with Skip. My role as an elected official is to provide the best possible municipal government to the citizens at the lowest possible cost to the taxpayers. That’s my job. And that will go on, or my name is not Sally Mounier. I will move mountains to make sure my folks are well taken care of.”

In the meantime, Markert says she’ll be paying attention to what happens next with Noe and the council.

“I want the city’s business to be accomplished equitably, accurately and collaboratively,” Markert said. “If taking the discussion off the table pushes us that way, good, if not, I guess I have to run.”

She quipped, “Let the ‘Skips’ fall where they may.”

— valrichardson17@gmail.com