In setback for mayor, Gig Harbor City Council commissions a survey of employee morale
Troubled by an exodus of key staff and accusations of abusive behavior by the mayor, the Gig Harbor City Council approved a plan Monday night for an independent, anonymous survey of employee morale.
The vote was 4-3 after a long, rancorous debate.
“We just need to do it now,” said Council Member Tracey Markley. “Get down to the guts. Get it into the light. All this stuff us just festering in the darkness.”
The mayor and three council supporters objected vigorously.
“This is a politically motivated situation,” said Council Member Jim Franich. “I’ve been with the mayor in many battles with employees who did not share the same vision. Any time you get pushback, you get unhappy people, and that’s going to unfairly skew this proposed survey.”
Voting for the survey were council members Markley, Le Rodenberg, Jeni Woock and Robyn Denson. Supporting the mayor were council members Jim Franich, Bob Himes and Spencer Abersold.
Employee engagement
The council authorized the mayor to sign a personal services contract with Insightlink, a Palm Springs, Calif. company that specializes in employee satisfaction surveys, at a cost of $4,800.
According to a summary provided to the council, city employees will take the “employee engagement survey” anonymously online, and the results will be compiled and returned to both the council and administration. Questions for the survey will be reviewed by the city attorney, who can ask for changes.
Rodenberg, who headed the ad-hoc committee that proposed the survey, said he expected it to be completed sometime in November. The other committee members were Denson and Woock.
‘Monstrous overreach’
Kuhn, who objected strenuously many times during the hour-long debate, called the vote a “monstrous overreach” by the council.
“This is not what council members were elected to do,” he said. Kuhn complained that the survey results would be seized upon by the city’s unions and would complicate negotiations.
The survey vote was the council’s response to a growing crisis at City Hall. More than 20 key employees, including department heads and longtime supervisors, have quit or retired since Kuhn became mayor in 2017 on a popular platform of slowing residential growth.
They include the planning director, Jennifer Kester; the chief planner, Lindsey Sehmel; the city engineer for 19 years, Steve Misiurak. Greg Foote, the city’s operation manager, took retirement after 32 years, and Kay Johnson, the city’s Information Technology manager, retired abruptly in December.
The city has quietly settled at least one discrimination complaint against the mayor, paying $27,000 to the city’s former tourism and marketing director, Karen Scott, who said she was loudly berated and bullied by the mayor, and told she should be a “cheerleader,” not a player, in a staff softball game.
But it was the abrupt resignation in July of the city’s well-liked parks manager, Nicole Jones-Vogel, that shocked and dismayed members of the council.
Dismissed and scolded
In a written comment submitted to council Monday night, Jones-Vogel spoke publicly for the first time about her difficulties with the mayor.
She said Kuhn Mayor Kuhn often short-circuited the public process, bypassed the Parks Commission and cherry-picked public input to bolster his pet projects. He did not like it when she objected, she said.
“Many times, when presenting my professional opinion I felt dismissed, belittled, and scolded and was told I was ‘over-complicating things,‘ she said. “As time went on my input was not sought and I was told to ‘comply’.”
Ultimately, she said, she was ordered into a “coaching” plan and told to be more respectful.
Jones-Vogel suggested the council rewrite the city’s employee conduct policy so that an employee could not be punished for offering a professional opinion.
Mimi Jansen, the former acting Tourism and Communications director, also submitted a public comment.
“I have observed, and was a target of, the mayor’s mercurial and often-times uncalled for admonishments,” she said. “There were instances where my professionalism and expertise were called into question, for reasons that were unfounded, and I would be subjected to loud scoldings and belittlement.
“Yet, I was also praised by the Mayor, (which I did appreciate), for my proficiency in areas that helped with the running of the department, so I was confounded by it.”
Jansen said the mayor asked her to use her personal Facebook account to defend his policies and she was demoted when she refused. She said she believes that is the reason she was not chosen for the permanent position.
Debate over authority
During debate, even some of the mayor’s supporters acknowledged, as Franich said, “maybe he could work on his approach in some cases.” But they said the complaints were being exaggerated to bolster the city unions and, as Himes put it, “to sell newspapers.”
“I believe the majority of these high-level people being referred to were at the end of their career anyway,” said Franich.
“I never heard anything —anything— from anybody that the mayor was causing people to leave,” said Himes. The minute his came out, the feeding frenzy began.”
In a letter to council members, city administrator Bob Larson agreed with the mayor that the council was overreaching its authority.
“Council’s authority is limited primarily to adopting and approving policies, adopting the annual budget and granting authority to the mayor to administer both,” Larson wrote. “ ... the responsibility and authority for the city’s day-to-day operations is vested with the mayor.”
The debate over authority led to council members on both sides flipping through their copies of the Association of Washington Cities handbook.
“It is important to recognize it is not the role of the council to administer,” said Abersold, quoting the AWC handbook. “That is the role of the mayor. It is not the role of the council member to supervise employees on a day-to-day basis.”
Markley countered with another quote, that “an employee may complain to council and seek relief.”
“In this case, we have multiple complaints, very valid complaints,” she said. “Is council supposed to just ignore, just continue to sweep these things under the rug?”
(In a related development, the council has scheduled a workshop meeting at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, August 27 with Skip Houser, legal counsel to the Association of Washington Cities to discuss roles and relationships between the mayor and council.)
Himes said an employee survey of almost any company or organization will come up with the same kind of results: “This is a terrible place to work, my wages are too low, and the mayor’s a jerk.”
But Denson, the third member of the ad-hoc committee that drafted the measure, said “This is not about Mayor Kuhn, this is about our employees.”
She said she appreciates all the mayor has accomplished, including an emphasis on customer service, but “serving our constituents means we have a capable, professional staff” secure in their jobs.
According to Rodenberg, the committee looked at about 11 companies before settling on Insightlink. Woock did most of the work of winnowing them down, he said. The committee liked Insightlink because of its experience, and because its proposed questions were neutral and generic.
The contact language was the subject of intense negotiations between the council and the administration, Rodenberg said.
“I don’t think any bill has gotten the scrutiny that this one has,” Rodenberg said before the meeting. “We’ve had to dot every i and cross every t. There’s a lot of paranoia in the administration. They think it’s a witch hunt.”
Rodenberg said the mayor was particularly anxious that the council not write any of the questions, because he felt they would be aimed at him.
RELATED STORIES: In an op-ed, Mayor Kuhn says he is keeping his campaign promise to hold employees accountable. Read all the public comments on the employee survey proposal here.
Reach Kerry Webster at kwebster@mcclatchyservices.com
This story was originally published August 25, 2020 at 12:00 AM.