The Haines Borough Assembly voted 4-2 at its regular meeting Tuesday to suspend borough manager Debra Schnabel with pay. The assembly will hold an executive session and will meet with the borough attorney to consider “the necessary steps to terminate the manager without cause.”
Assembly members Paul Rogers, Brenda Josephson, Gabe Thomas and Jerry Lapp were in favor while members Stephanie Scott and Zephyr Sincerny were opposed.
Rogers made the motion after asking Schnabel to resign Monday. He told Schnabel that if she declined to step down, he would make a motion to begin the process of firing her at Tuesday’s regular meeting. The plan to suspend Schnabel came as a surprise to residents, who learned of Rogers’ plan through news reports.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Rogers listed many reasons she Schnabel should be fired. He said the manager doesn’t understand her role and often works against the assembly in pursuing her own agenda. He detailed several accounts of what he described as failures of leadership.
“At what point in time does the borough manager begin to understand that she needs to be above reproach?” Rogers said at the meeting after detailing several examples of his issues with her.
Scott made a motion to postpone the suspension until the assembly talks with the borough attorney and can give the manager an official evaluation. The motion to postpone failed 2-4 with only Scott and Sincerny voting in favor.
“I think that would be respected by the community so that’s why I thought we should postpone,” Scott said. “I’m also a little bit worried about what we’re going to do in the absence of the manager. We’ve done this before.”
Since 2009, borough assemblies have fired three managers: Robert Venables, Tom Bolen and Bill Seward. The assembly fired Seward in 2016 with cause during a performance evaluation that Seward asked to be public. The assembly failed to contact the borough attorney before firing Seward, a requirement for insurance purposes and Seward sued the borough for wrongful termination.
Past assemblies fired both Venables and Seward at a public meeting without any advance notice.
Lapp was on the assembly when Venables was fired in 2009. At that public meeting, Lapp was vocal in his opposition to the manager’s termination without warning or notice on the meeting agenda, according to a CVN news report from the time. “This is the lowest thing I’ve seen here since I’ve been in politics,” Lapp said at the 2009 meeting. “I don’t agree with this being brought up like this with no prior knowledge.”
On Tuesday night, Lapp said he’s been a part of manager firings that “were unpleasant because it was a surprise to the manager.”
“The assembly had already worked it out ahead of time,” Lapp said. “They said last minute, ‘You’re fired.’ It wasn’t very pleasant at all.”
It’s unclear whether the assembly members who voted to suspend Schnabel will choose to fire her. The motion includes the language that the assembly will “consider the necessary steps to terminate the manager’s employment without cause.”
Lapp said at the meeting he hopes the assembly and the manager can come to terms. “I’d like us to get together and work something out,” he said.
He said he was concerned that suspending the manager would disrupt the budget process. He did not reply to a request for comment.
Assembly member Gabe Thomas said the vote doesn’t mean the assembly will fire Schnabel. He said the budget process might be easier without a manager. “Every time we come up with some kind of idea or direction it falls on deaf ears,” Thomas said of Schnabel. Later in the meeting Thomas said he thought the discussion on Schnabel’s performance should occur in private out of respect for her. Schnabel told the CVN she would request any meeting that evaluates her performance to be in public.
Josephson said she’s wanted to have a meeting to discuss Schnabel’s performance for six months. The assembly’s personnel committee hasn’t finalized the process, which Josephson said was a result of delay tactics by committee members. Josephson also said the assembly was “not talking about terminating the manager” and that she’s getting the opportunity of process.
“It was my understanding that we were going to have a meeting where we were going to discuss the situation,” Josephson told the CVN after the meeting. “Will it be an evaluation? I guess we’ll see what happens with the meeting.”
After the meeting, Schnabel told the CVN she was unsure what process she is receiving based on the language of the motion. “(The motion) didn’t say we are going to schedule an evaluation,” Schnabel said. “If they were sincere with me, they would have scheduled an evaluation but it didn’t seem to me they scheduled an evaluation even though some of the people are talking as if that’s what they thought they were doing.”
Schnabel said her suspension will put strain on remaining staff and leave borough business unfinished such as an open grant application, a negotiation with AML on the Lutak Dock lease and a Federal Emergency Management Agency mitigation plan.
“I really don’t believe the assembly has an appreciation for the myriad things that are going on,” Schnabel said. “That’s my job, to keep the strings attached. They’ve cut the strings. It’s a great staff. They’re going to do their best but everything needs glue.”
Sincerny supported evaluating the manager before suspending her. “In this situation I think it’s appropriate to do an evaluation, to address issues that need to be worked on and addressed, set specific objectives and goals for improvement and a timeframe for re-evaluation,” Sincerny said. “I think those are the steps that should be taken in any business or any entity.”
Rogers referenced several instances in what he described as irrational and problematic behavior including Schnabel’s use of borough equipment and staff to sand her private road on Fourth Avenue after a snowstorm in January without compensating the borough, and using public equipment and staff to improve state land at the Battery Point trailhead—all complaints made by Don Turner Jr.
In response to Turner’s complaints, Schnabel directed public facilities director Ed Coffland in December 2019 to stop maintaining the section of Fourth Avenue that runs through the trailer court. The following month after a snowstorm, she asked Coffland to send a truck to sand the road and said she would pay for the service as a private business owner. According to borough code, assembly approval is required for the use of borough equipment to improve private property.
“I was wrong,” Schnabel told the CVN. “I was wrong to think that the borough sanding truck could be hired to sand Fourth Avenue.”
Rogers also said it was inappropriate that Schnabel asked businesses to post flyers listing health mandate information. On Saturday, May 2, Schnabel went into Haines Home Building Supply and asked customers why they weren’t wearing masks.
More than a dozen residents spoke in support of retaining Schnabel as manager, many of whom expressed frustration that the public wasn’t made aware of the plan and that letting a manager go in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic was short sighted and reactionary.
“We’re in disbelief that that question of her retention has come up on such short notice,” Liz Heywood said. “The borough has been operating very smoothly since her hire. If assembly members have concerns about her management style, those should have been brought up in regular performance reviews.”
Kristine Harder questioned how the assembly would interview candidates during a pandemic. “This is ridiculous,” Harder said. “You guys need to take a chill pill.”
Thom Ely told the four assembly members who voted to suspend Schnabel that they were a hangman’s jury and that they would suffer at the ballot box.
“I think you will regret this decision very, very significantly,” Ely said. “Your decision to do this out of the blue with no public notice just perpetuates the divisiveness in our community. It is clear there has been a behind the scenes network to make this happen because of the way it was sprung upon us without any public notice or knowledge.”
Dawn Drotos said she didn’t think the assembly represented the will of the community. “I would not assume in this current pandemic situation that your hearing from a broad spectrum of your constituents,” Drotos said. “We are not able to attend assembly meetings in person. We are not able to go to the borough buildings. We are not able to participate in our government in a way we would be able to (normally.)”
Five people spoke in support of Schnabel’s termination including Don Turner Jr., who lodged a complaint about Schnabel last year. “It’s my opinion that Miss Schnabel is incompetent as our manager,” Turner said. “She runs the borough as her own private business.”
Mark Smith said Schnabel was not a good leader and that the assembly should fire her despite the difficulty of finding a qualified candidate. “I know you’re going to have a hard time finding anybody,” Smith said. ‘Haines is an extremely difficult place to draw qualified human beings.”
Former assembly member Tom Morphet worked with Schnabel and told the assembly that Schnabel’s tendency to put her own agenda in front of the assembly was an issue that needed to addressed, although he questioned the timing of the suspension.
“This is an issue that isn’t seen by people outside of meetings often but it’s a real public issue and it will be a chronic problem until it’s addressed,” Morphet said.
Borough clerk Alekka Fullerton will fill in as acting manager. The assembly is in the process of scheduling a meeting with the borough attorney.
Rogers said he and Mayor Jan Hill have discussed who would replace Schnabel if she is fired, but have not identified anyone. “We had some discussion and the general thinking is we can get by better without somebody at the moment than we’re doing right now with somebody,” Rogers said.
Schnabel’s hire was controversial in 2018. Hill was opposed to the hire. She called the hire a “set up job” during a public meeting and charged the assembly with violating borough charter because she was not hired “solely on professional qualifications.” Many community members advocated for the hire of former public facilities director Brad Ryan, who had served as interim manager twice, rather than Schnabel, who had a degree in public administration, but no municipal management experience at the time.