The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
City launches new worker review process
MIDDLETOWN — The city has instituted a process by which municipal personnel will be appraised on their duties on a regular basis, a review Mayor Ben Florsheim predicts could take close to a year because it will include 600 employees.
A review process was established during the last administration, but had not been implemented when he took office, Florsheim said. He said he preferred to wait until he had been in the job for a year before reviews were conducted.
“It was not something we were comfortable doing right out of the gate because we were new,” he said.
“They had a template for what it would look like, but it had never gone into effect.”
Department heads will be done first, according to the mayor.
The issue has been pushed for some time by many longtime council members, including the late council majority leader Thomas Serra, Florsheim said. “It was something close to his heart.”
“It’s not about an ‘I gotcha moment,’ ” said Common Councilor Ed McKeon, who has been among those who have called for the reviews to be implemented. Such reviews give management documentation to use in the case of an advancement request, for new directors to know their employees’ strengths, and how they do their jobs well, he said.
The Middletown Board of Education already has an assessment policy for teachers, McKeon said. Most nonprofits, municipal governments and other entities already have a system of reviews in place, he said. “It’s always been totally strange to me that the city didn’t have them.”
“It’s going to be beneficial for everybody. It’s something that was talked about by many mayoral and council candidates during last year’s campaign,” Florsheim said. “You hear about accountability and
want to make sure employees are performing at their best.”
“It’s a very odd and unusual situation for any organization not to have some sort of annual review of employee performance,” McKeon said. “It is one of those things where anyone you tell they’re not doing evaluations at City Hall would say ‘what?’ People are shocked.”
The administration may not necessarily hear about the “above- and-beyond stuff,” happening every day by municipal employees unless they notice it, Florsheim said.
McKeon said he suspects a few people might not welcome the new program, “but that’s like anything where there is change. People are going to get used to it, and understand that it’s not a bad thing. It will work to your advantage if you’re doing a great job,” he said.
The mayor is also considering another change to city functioning, this time in the Planning, Conservation and Development office, by splitting it into two units: land use and zoning, and economic and community development, he said.
“In the legacy of that department, there was a period of time leading up to when I came into office where there was a lot of turnover in the town planner role,” which caused a lack of continuity, Florsheim said.
The separate functions of the office can sometimes be at odds with one another, McKeon said. “When you’re pushing for development, sometimes the temptation is to leave planning and conservation to the side, whereas, when you have departments that will step up and advocate for those things, it’s a great thing.”