By Tracy Ouellette
Editor
The East Troy Village Board members discussed having the department head evaluate the trustees performance at the Feb. 1 meetings.
The idea was brought to the board members by board President Randy Timms, who said it was a common practice in the business world and he thought it would be a good idea for the three department heads – administration, public works and the police department – to evaluate the trustees with an anonymous form to rate how they felt the trustees were doing their job.
Timms acknowledged the voters were the ultimate evaluators of the trustees and spoke during election time, “but the public doesn’t see us in action day to day like they (the department heads) do.”
Several of the board members questioned whether this type of evaluation was a good idea.
“This is the tail wagging the dog,” Trustee Ann Zess said. “We should not be doing this. This doesn’t make any sense. What is it going to accomplish? A few people I brought this up to laughed outright at it.”
Trustee Dusty Stanford said he considered it a way to open up a dialog and thought the village should be operating more like a business.
Trustee Scott Seager said he was concerned about the evaluations being public record and the consequences that might result should personal feelings play into the department head’s ratings.
“Anything we say and do is public record and anything spiteful that might be said could affect an election,” Seager said.
Seager went on to say that he didn’t necessarily disagree with the concept, but that they needed to be careful on they went about accomplishing the task.
“So it’s not just something that gets written up in the paper because someone was angry,” Seager said.
Zess reiterated her dislike of the idea, saying the board members and department heads were all adults and should be able to discuss things like performance in a civilized, professional manor. She also questioned if there might be a liability issue for the village.
Timms said the performance reviews would be anonymous and not be a legal problem.
Trustee Linda Kaplan said she thought the evaluations could be helpful, but agreed that there could be problems because everything would be public record.
Timms said he was “disappointed” some of the board members weren’t in favor of doing the reviews.
“I hear from staff all the time about trustees not doing their jobs,” Timms said. “We’re supposed to be adults and each of us has a job to do and some trustees aren’t doing it.”
“We’re not U.S. Steel,” Trustee Forty Renucci said. “We’re a small community and we can talk to each other.”
“I agree we should talk to each other, but we don’t,” Timms responded.
Trustee Fred Douglass said he could understand both sides of the issue, but also voiced concerns about the public nature of the reviews and how they could be misunderstood.
“Unintended consequences could occur,” Douglass said. “If we could do it without that, I’d be all for it.”
In the end, Timms withdrew the proposal, saying if the board didn’t support it, it wasn’t worth pursuing.
Interesting, the next topic of discussion at the Feb. 1 meeting was brought to the board by Seager, who said he felt the way the department heads were evaluated by the board members should be changed.
Seager said he didn’t feel “qualified” to answer some of the questions on the department head’s annual reviews because he didn’t deal with them on a “day to day” basis. Seager suggested options such as having the subordinates evaluate the department heads or using self-evaluations.
The board decided to re-evaluate the evaluation process at a committee of the whole meeting sometime in summer.
