How did the City Administrator, who hired the department heads that mismanaged two of the city's big

How did the City Administrator, who hired the department heads that mismanaged two of the city's biggest disasters in modern history, secure a $1.6MM payment for emotional damages and lost wages in secret without a city council vote until after the 2023 municipal elections?

Important note to the reader: All underlined phrases in the timeline below hyperlink to the document that corroborates that statement. Most of the hyperlinked documents were acquired through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.