With Haines Borough Manager David Sosa’s one-year anniversary approaching, so too is his first performance evaluation.
On Wednesday, assembly members will meet to discuss the procedure for evaluating him.
Historically, only assembly members have assessed the manager, using evaluation forms and holding discussions in executive session. Employees, who work in the same building as the manager on a daily basis, haven’t been consulted.
Sosa said employees can go to their department heads or to the Mayor to give feedback on his performance, though those people aren’t responsible for the evaluation.
A review of procedures in other Southeast towns this week revealed a variety of approaches to evaluating a municipality’s top staffer.
In the Petersburg Borough, both assembly members and department heads fill out evaluation forms for the manager, said deputy clerk Debbie Thompson.
“Once a year, we have a form that we send out to all the department heads and to the assembly members and we ask them to evaluate the manager. Then when we get everything back, we take all of those forms and compile them all onto one form so the manager doesn’t necessarily know where they all came from,” Thompson said.
Subordinates of the department heads can then go to their bosses, who include that feedback in their evaluation. “We are hoping employees would go to their supervisor and say, ‘Hey, I have an issue with this,’” Thompson said.
Thompson also doubles as the Petersburg Borough’s human resources director, meaning any staff members can take their concerns to her and she passes them on anonymously. “Maybe the employee wouldn’t feel comfortable speaking with their department head negatively about the manager,” Thompson said.
Petersburg manager Steve Giesbrecht also evaluates department heads by first asking two other department heads to evaluate that person. Those anonymous, peer evaluations are then incorporated when Giesbrecht provides the department head with his evaluation.
Other municipalities, like Skagway and Wrangell, are in the same gray area as Haines.
Kim Lane, clerk for the Wrangell Borough, said the municipality conducts evaluations the same way Haines does. Staff members aren’t involved in the evaluation process, though concerned employees could contact the Mayor or assembly members and ask their feedback be kept confidential, Lane said.
In Skagway, where assembly members exclusively evaluate the manager, disgruntled employees have shown up at assembly meetings and publicly voiced their problems with the manager.
“We’ve had this happen before where staff comes to an assembly meeting and gets up and talks about what they don’t like, and that is not considered appropriate procedure because that is not their direct supervisor,” said Skagway Borough Clerk Emily Deach.
“We’ve had that issue in the past where it was like, ‘Well, nobody asked me,’ after things go bad and the manager is gone. The employee says, ‘Nobody asked me what I thought, and I could have told them a long time ago,’” Deach added.
While there isn’t a requirement for assembly members to talk to department heads or other employees, it is within their rights to do so, Deach said. Still, there isn’t a formal mechanism to ensure employees are heard.
“It might be a gap that needs to be filled,” Deach said.
Chief fiscal officer Jila Stuart, a department head who has worked for the Haines Borough for about a decade, said staff hasn’t been involved in the evaluation process since she has been at the borough, though that doesn’t necessarily bother her.
“I have no objection to it, but I have no expectation that we should be able to,” Stuart said.
In previous administrations, assembly members have come to her informally and asked for her thoughts on working with the manager, Stuart said.
Assembly member Mike Case said he is also largely indifferent to whether there should be an established system for employees to provide input for the manager’s evaluation.
“I would not advocate for a provision that incorporated that requirement, but neither would I argue against it,” Case said. “Most of the assembly members have been associated with the borough in one way or another for a number of years and tend to be aware of how the employees feel about the way things are going. I feel that awareness will be factored into our individual evaluations of the manager and will give fair weight to employee opinions.”
Case said he hopes employees feel they can come to him with their concerns or satisfactions, though he wouldn’t say he necessarily encourages them to do so. “I don’t want to encourage people to go around their boss. I would much rather have them go to their boss with their concerns,” he said.
Sosa said a type of evaluation called a “360-degree” evaluation could be helpful, if done properly. In a 360-degree evaluation, individuals are evaluated by their superiors, their peers and their subordinates.
Sosa acknowledged the current process could possibly be improved. “While there is nothing that prevents an employee form coming forward, there is also nothing that facilitates it either and this may be an item that could be addressed with a code change,” he said.
The assembly will discuss procedures for the manager’s evaluation at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.