Off with their heads.

That’s the Colorado Springs City Council’s reaction to the Memorial Health System’s board of directors’ decision to give CEO Larry McEvoy a $1.15 million severance package. Under McEvoy’s initial contract, he was to have received $335,000 upon his departure.

Under a general outline signed off on by the Memorial board, McEvoy would get a package worth about three times that, including a car and cash to cover job-hunting expenses. Left out of the package were the first-born children of all Colorado Springs families since 1995.

McEvoy, you’ll remember, has not yet been on the job for five years. He directed a process aimed at changing Memorial’s governance and while he remained nominally neutral, it was clear McEvoy wanted the hospital system to become a free-standing nonprofit with himself at the helm.

Alas, the city now appears headed for a merger the University of Colorado Hospital and Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins. This looks like it will create a competitive nonprofit system that might eventually result in a medical school expansion at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs — a great result for the city but not so good for McEvoy, since there would be no need for a CEO here any longer.

In a rush of sympathy for its fair-haired boy, the Memorial board decide to tear up the old severance deal and replace it with a gold-plated one. They defended it by saying it was needed so the hospital could attract good talent in the future.

That doesn’t make sense, since Memorial isn’t going to hire another CEO, but nevermind.

At a special meeting Tuesday, the council approved a resolution asking for the board members’ resignations, and to fire those who refuse to resign. Second, the council ordered a two-week review of the severance deal, as Council President Scott Hente put it, “to get the legal ramifications of what was signed.”

Overturning the severance package is unlikely. Undoubtedly the city’s legal minds have been looking at this already. Perhaps two weeks will allow them to find a loophole, but don’t bet on it.

Instead, angry citizens, prepare to chew this unpalatable meal up and choke it down. In the meantime, McEvoy will walk off with a piece of cake with ice cream on the side and in a few months, we will dutifully report to you which six-figure job he has landed.

This is not a fleecing of taxpayers, as some have claimed, because no tax money is involved. But Memorial’s employees, who got no pay raise this year, have a right to feel betrayed by their leadership.

And the City Council gets some of the blame. As bad a decision as Memorial’s board made, it only did what it was allowed to do.

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Listen to Barry Noreen on KRDO NewsRadio 105.5 FM and 1240 AM at 6:35 a.m. on Fridays and follow him on Facebook and Twitter.