After only six months on the job, Manager Bill Seward was terminated Wednesday night by the borough assembly following an emotionally-wracked evening in which a tearful Mayor Jan Hill accused the panel of being “axe hurlers.”
The abrupt dismissal came after complaints that Seward suffered ongoing personnel issues with his borough staff and initiated numerous actions without assembly direction.
Assembly members Heather Lende and Margaret Friedenauer said they received several unsolicited calls from borough staff about the atmosphere under Seward’s leadership. Member Tresham Gregg expressed concern that some of Seward’s actions might leave the borough open to legal action.
“He seems to jump to conclusions and make personal decisions about people and those on his staff that don’t seem to be researched,” Gregg said.
The late-night drama unfolded during what would otherwise have been a routine six-month evaluation written into Seward’s contract when he was hired May 14 on a 4-2 vote by the assembly.
Coincidentally, the emotionally-divided borough assembly terminated Seward by the same vote.
Tom Morphet, Friedenenuer, Gregg and Ron Jackson voted for the termination. Mike Case and Heather Lende were opposed.
All but 45 minutes of the three-and-a-half-hour meeting were held in public at Seward’s request.
The critical moment in the debate came when the assembly went into an executive session to discuss allegations that Seward told the president of a company that employs resident Gershon Cohen that the company would get no work in Haines as long as Cohen worked there.
Following that session, a meeting that seemed like it was going to end by giving Seward a three-month probation to remedy the assembly’s problems with his performance turned raucous as a dozen stunned residents – including Seward’s wife Cary – looked on.
Just before 10 p.m., as the assembly neared a 10 p.m. meeting deadline, members voted on a measure introduced by assembly member Tom Morphet, who owns the Chilkat Valley News, that Seward should be terminated immediately for cause.
One by one, assembly members rued the fact that, while they liked working with Seward, they did not think he could turn around a profoundly-flawed performance during his short time on the job.
Prior to his hiring in May, Seward, a Kodiak-born Tlingit Native, served in the Coast Guard for nearly three decades and was lastly a director of auxiliary and recreational boating safety in Miami, Fla. During his assembly interview, he emphasized his creative problem-solving skills and penchant for helping his staff succeed. He is the father of two boys, aged 21 and 23.
Then Hill addressed the gathering, saying she was “very disappointed” with the action.
“We’ve dealt some pretty harsh blows to this manager tonight. When we hired him, we knew he didn’t have municipal experience but he’s a very intelligent man,” she said, her voice breaking.
“Our job is to help our manager succeed but we have just jumped off the cliff in my opinion. It feels like you’re all axe-hurlers and I’m really sad.”
She referred to numerous pages of mostly-critical assembly member reviews of Seward’s performance and added: “We just blasted Mr. Seward with 20 mostly-critical pages and you aren’t going to give him an opportunity to try and fix it? I just think that’s awful.”
After the vote, Seward and his wife left the meeting chambers and he was later embraced by supporters, including Police Chief Heath Scott.
“That came out of left field,” Seward said.
Seward’s review took on an ominous tone when Morphet opened the meeting by reading a three-page statement offering a litany of failings that included taking initiatives on his own against the will of the borough assembly.
Among Morphet’s complaints were that Seward announced July 6 he was postponing the harbor project, which “either disregarded or misunderstood the parameters of his authority nearly two months after his hire.” He also cancelled a borough assembly meeting following a small amount of snow that Morphet said indirectly led to a $35,000 rise in the cost of the harbor expansion addition.
“Mr. Seward has, in my opinion, made continuous missteps that reflect his judgement and diligence are not at the caliber required to do this job effectively. Moreover, these are traits, not skills. They cannot be quickly learned in a workshop or even picked up over time. Morphet said. “Even if they could be learned, in the words of one borough employee dissatisfied with Mr. Seward’s performance, ‘This is not a job for on-the-job training.’”
Case voted against terminating Seward, cautioned that it would be expensive to replace him. “I don’t want to make this a revolving door where every six months we start looking for a new manager,” he said.
Case implored the assembly to give the manager three months to try and save his job. “He served his country for 28 years,” Case said. “We ought to be able to give him three months.”
At one point, when asked if he wanted to make a statement, Seward admitted to the assembly that he had made mistakes. “I fumbled a couple of times in the beginning,” he said. “I chalk it up to lessons learned.”
Morphet challenged that Seward was not clear about his role as borough manager. “You manage this municipality,” he said. “You don’t lead it.”
Following the vote, several residents spoke angrily about the decision during a public comment period. Don Turner threatened to start a drive to recall Morphet from the assembly.
An angry Diana Lapham said she was ashamed of her community: “If anyone tells me how wonderful and cordial and kumbaya Haines is, I’m going to tell them to go someplace else.”