I think based upon me discussing openly on my Facebook page some of the issues within our city, it is clear that I am not satisfied with our city's direction.
Something that occurred recently that I vehemently opposed was the Mayor's appointment of a Manager for the GC Cinema. I confirmed with him that he did not post the job to the website through normal and logical HR methods. He appointed (recommended) to the City Council hiring someone who many suspect had political affiliations with him. I emailed 5 members of the City Council and only received 2 responses before the vote was approved. I was told that the situation was dire and that is was an emergency to get a Manager hired (even though the Cinema had a paid assistant manager). I was also told that it is within the law and code of the City for the Mayor to appoint whoever he wants in whatever method he likes. I think it was a political appointment, which does not help our City. Now I'm not at all saying that the appointee won't be good at the job or that he wouldn't have been selected even if all typical hiring procedures would have been followed. It just looks dirty and makes people not have faith in their government.
I will make a pledge to advertise, take applications for, and interview every single person that I appoint to a position if I am elected Mayor. In fact, I'll go a step further...I'll attempt to write it into code how hiring at the City should work. Naturally that has to be approved by the Council, so I can't make any promises that will be done hence my personal pledge to the people.
The Econonic Development hiring situation was one that I also emailed the Mayor and City Council about. I actually applied for that position at the recommendation of the Mayor. I didn't receive an interview (with a Master's degree in political science and public policy and a fairly decent resume in many folks' opinions). The most crucial part of this is that for the entire duration of the hiring process, I didn't receive a phone call, a letter, or an email, telling me about my status. In fact, I had to contact the city to inquire about my status, and I was told that the Mayor had given hiring authority to the acting Economic Developer at the time (Pennekamp I believe). My point is that I tried to make the process better and more fair, and I contacted all of the Members of the City Council about what I considered a lackluster hiring process. Nothing changed.
I'm going to let the actual performance of the Economic Developer speak for itself. I haven't read his evaluation (if he had one), but I'm assuming that with the pay he makes, it should be stellar.
All that I can say with certainty is that if elected, personnel processes would definitely change.
on June 8, 2018, 8:43 pm, in reply to "