SAN BERNARDINO >> Mayor Carey Davis stunned City Manager Allen Parker on Friday by asking him to resign and blaming him for the slow progress in the city’s bankruptcy case.

Parker refused to quit.

Under the city’s charter, the city manager can be removed only by the City Council at the request of the mayor. That request will come in a closed session at the Dec. 15 meeting or before, and the mayor isn’t commenting on the reasons because it’s a personnel matter, according to his chief of staff, Michael McKinney.

Parker said a number of factors had impeded progress, and that the mayor hadn’t expressed dissatisfaction with his work until Friday.

“There’s a lot of things that could be going on that I have no knowledge of. I don’t know,” he said. “I was a little shocked when he said that to me because it absolutely came out of nowhere. My hope is I have enough credibility with the council that they’ll keep me on.”

Two City Council members called for a performance review of Parker in July, after he and then-Finance Director David Cain both missed the final budget hearing because of a scheduled vacation.

But that evaluation never happened. For one thing, Parker said, he was never given written standards by which to weigh his performance against.

That should change, said Councilman John Valdivia, who put the request for an evaluation on the closed-session agenda that month, but he had “no fallout” with Parker.

“I think the time to act was then, but (Davis) didn’t have his bearings on the issue and didn’t bother to ask my opinion of where I was going with it,” he said. “Fast forward six months, and the mayor’s deciding in a vacuum we need new leadership.”

Valdivia said he needed to hear Parker’s side and think it over before deciding whether he should be asked to leave, but wondered if this was the best time to eliminate the top nonelective position.

“We had David Cain leave, he was the director of finance, and we’ve had a few mid level managers, then McKinney,” he said. “What does this mean for the bankruptcy?”

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Jury, impatient with the city’s lack of progress, decided in November that the city had until May 30 to come up with a detailed bankruptcy exit plan.

Parker said there is progress on that front, with meetings underway with Management Partners, a consulting team that led Stockton through its bankruptcy and was hired at Parker’s request.

Two deputy city managers have been in place for months or less.

Davis was rebuffed by the council on Monday when it voted 5-2 against extending McKinney’s contract.

Parker said Davis asked him to advocate for McKinney to the council, but Parker felt it would be inappropriate. That didn’t come up during Friday’s meeting, he said.

“He’s blaming me for the state of the bankruptcy, that we haven’t pulled out yet, etc. etc.,” Parker said. “I’m taking him at face value. However, I think the mayor is in error. I find it very difficult to attribute the state of the city’s bankruptcy to me. It took a long time to get into bankruptcy.”

Parker was hired in February 2013 for $212,976 per year.