Am I misperceiving, or was the Chilkat Valley News in their May 19 editorial “welcoming” our new borough manager to Haines being deliberately disingenuous? And, how about those borough employees who think that their new supervisor needs to be someone who is more “trainable,” according to the “Coastguardsman Chosen as Manager” story in the same issue?
In that same story, reporter Karen Garcia describes our newly hired manager, Mr. Seward, as “a Kodiak-born Tlingit.” (Seward later clarified to the CVN that he was born in Oregon, raised in Kodiak.) Would Ms. Garcia’s chosen words not have been more locally descriptive and succinct than the “Coast Guardsman” identification used for that same front-page headline?
A learning curve is to be expected with any new hire, no matter what level the position, but I found the advice in the CVN editorial both imperiously didactic and an insult to Mr. Seward’s intelligence: “Do your own thinking”? Oh, c’mon. And, does a Kodiak-raised Tlingit really need to be educated about “harsh climates”?
At least three times in the CVN’s front-page news story, the staff group, one of three stake-holder groups appointed to evaluate manager applicants, stated as a drawback in Mr. Seward’s manager qualifications, that he would need too much training—by them! Since when is it appropriate for a supervisor to get trained by subordinates? Cart before the horse? Yep, it’s parked in Haines.
Diana Kelm