The city manager and police chief evaluations will look different for Sandusky’s city council this year, with it decided after discussion during Monday night’s meeting that a new form would be drawn up for council feedback.
For the past several years, the city’s evaluations of City Manager Dave Faber and Police Chief Brett Lester relied heavily on the men’s self-reported activities and accomplishments, with last year’s evaluation seeing Faber provide eight pages of feedback and Lester producing 5 pages. However, prior to the recent meeting, council member Tim Stone expressed to the mayor some concern about how the evaluation is handled– namely, that there is no input from the council itself, with the council contributing only on the final approval.
When the council met May 6 for the month’s first meeting, Mayor Lukshaitis asked the council how they would like to handle the evaluation process. He did note that over 10 years ago, the city manager and police chief evaluations had more council input, with a numerical evaluation system being used to rate performance and spaces left for additional comments.
However, he explained, the evaluation responsibility fell into the mayor’s lap wholly, and the system he had developed with the self-reports had allowed evaluations to be passed with “very little to do.”
While council member Norton Schramm suggested sending the evaluations to be handled by the personnel committee, which is made up of council members Virginia Bissett, Sandra Barr and Larry Mitchell, Stone said that all council members should be able to give input. Stone recalled his surprise the prior year when evaluations were presented on the agenda without major discussion or input from the council before approval. He also noted that the current evaluations do not include critiques or new yearly goals.
Though the mayor expressed some worries about the evaluations being subjective, Mitchell pointed out that by going back to a numerical/rating evaluation would allow for scores to be averaged and thus made objective. Council member Brad Harris agreed with Stone and Mitchell’s points, also agreeing with them when Lukshaitis asked if they would like Lester and Faber to present their activities for the past year prior to giving any evaluation. With this discussion and the city manager offering his assistance in procuring examples, Mayor Lukshaitis asked the personnel committee to draw up a new form/list of questions for the council.
Also at Monday’s meeting, City Manager Dave Faber shared that ongoing construction for the main water main line was roughly at Hart Street, with the hope that the end of this week or the middle of next will see all main lines in, from downtown Sandusky to Dawson Street.
After services are put in and fire hydrants are tapped, Faber says the contractor will either go east from Campbell Road to Orval Street to put down plastic for the project, or they will be ready to do the downtown section. Faber noted that while the downtown is under construction, the detour will change and become Dawson Street to Argyle Street and then to Jackson Street.
The Sandusky City Council will meet again on Monday, May 20.
