Park City manager says morale is good, but no surveys confirm it

Park City’s new manager says employee morale is strong, but the city is not collecting formal survey data to prove it. That leaves residents without a clear measure of whether the municipal workforce is ready to deliver on daily services, large capital work and the pressures that come with a high-cost resort economy.

Adam Lenhard, who has been on the job since March, said morale is “a symptom or a reflection of your company culture” and argued that it affects productivity, employee retention and engagement. He also said Park City workers are “really hungry” and excited about the future as the city looks toward the 2034 Winter Olympics.

The problem is that Park City cannot point to current morale surveys to show whether that confidence is grounded in data. The city once used annual employee surveys, but those were discontinued more than a decade ago after officials raised concerns that anonymous responses were not reliable. A 2025 Park Record report said City Hall had gone at least five years without an anonymous staff morale survey, and HR director Sarah Mangano said anonymous surveys often do not produce actionable information for organizational improvements.

That gap matters because Park City depends on a relatively small but critical workforce. The city has 360 full-time employees, and in 2024 it said one municipal mechanic position had gone unfilled for more than 400 days. Park City said its Employee Value Proposition program later cut hiring timelines to about 60 to 90 days, while quarterly performance reviews, improved health benefits, employee recognition tools and modernized recruitment were added to strengthen retention.

The city also knows pay and competitiveness remain under pressure. A Mercer compensation study in 2019 found Park City was well behind the market, a difficult reality in a community where housing costs and resort wages shape who can stay and who leaves. Park City’s own government philosophy page says the municipality aims to become “The Best Resort Town in America” and stresses teamwork, continuous improvement, data-based decision-making, relationship and communication.

The morale question lands during a broader leadership transition at City Hall. Former manager Matt Dias left for the private sector in September 2025 after nearly six years as city manager, and Lenhard arrived after a recruitment that stretched through the fall and winter. He became the first outsider to hold the Marsac Building post since the 1980s.

Park City has also been managing signs of public unease. A 2025 National Community Survey found only 39% of respondents rated the city’s overall direction as excellent or good, while 46% rated confidence in local government that way. Mayor Nann Worel said those results reflected a period of flux and compared Park City’s performance with resort peers including Aspen, Colorado, and Sedona, Arizona.