Seth Johnson
The Gainesville City Commission wants to codify its evaluation process for charter officers in hopes of standardizing annual practices and avoiding issues that led to sharp public exchanges at a January commission meeting.
City attorney Dan Nee said the evaluation process broke down after last-minute evaluations were submitted by Commissioner Desmon Duncan-Walker and seen by charter officers minutes before the Jan. 4 meeting.
Nee called the evaluation of him an “unprofessional opinion,” while City Manager Cynthia Curry also brought up issues stemming from the evaluation and inability to speak with Duncan-Walker about it.
“Honestly, I have a beef with [human resources],” Nee said at the Jan. 11 meeting. “HR should not have included [Duncan-Walker’s evaluations] in what went before you. The process broke down.”
A resolution addressing the issue is expected to come before the commission in the next couple months. The resolution would establish dates that commissioners must keep in order for their evaluation to count. The deadline would give at least a full month between when the evaluations are submitted and when the City Commission has a meeting to discuss the charter officer positions.
Commissioners approved the initial plan on Feb. 1, and Mayor Harvey Ward said Friday he would make sure the resolution comes forward in a timely manner.
The City Commission planned to talk about all six charter officer evaluations at the Jan. 4 meeting, with backup documents showing each commissioner’s evaluation of each charter officer.
Just before the afternoon session, the backup documents were updated to include Duncan-Walker’s evaluations. Human Resources Director Laura Graetz noted that updated averages of the charter officer scores had been handed out, referencing Duncan-Walker’s late evaluations.
Following a conversation by the commissioners, with Duncan-Walker absent from the meeting, the city manager spoke up.
Curry said her evaluation from Duncan-Walker had just arrived two minutes before the afternoon session started. Curry also said the evaluation process felt different for one commissioner than the rest and noted that charter officers work at the behest of the entire commission—not reporting to a single commissioner.
“I will not be pushed to the point where I believe it is in conflict with our ordinances or the charter,” Curry said.
Curry referenced a commissioner taking steps to influence staff and to acquire transcripts of an internal city staff meeting.
City emails show a message from Duncan-Walker to Curry from May 2023 that outlines concerns with how Police Chief Lonnie Scott was handling the hiring of an assistant police chief. In the email, Duncan-Walker recommended that Curry take over the hiring process instead of Scott.
“I believe the GPD needs ‘New Blood’ in its highest administrative offices to ensure the top-down change and culture change we have agreed is needed,” Duncan-Walker wrote. “This means hiring agency leadership who is not from the area and, thereby, free from the influence of the Gainesville Police Department, the University of Florida, etc…”
City emails show that Curry forwarded the message to Zeriah Folston, head of the office of equity and inclusion, along with Graetz and Scott. Curry later said that a report was filed and sent to Duncan-Walker.
At the Jan. 4 meeting, the City Commission approved 2.5% raises to keep up with inflation. A week later, the evaluation process returned for discussion as Duncan-Walker responded to Curry’s comments from the prior week.
“There’s something that I want to make sure that I’m very, very clear about because there was, what I feel, a narrative that was created that misconstrued my leadership,” Duncan-Walker said.
Duncan-Walker said she had highlighted an issue with the process. Concerning an office of gun violence prevention, Duncan-Walker said Curry had scuttled the idea with community members before the city or county had an opportunity to discuss it.
Duncan-Walker also said she would never try to direct staff by herself. She also said she had an open-door policy for any charter officer who wanted to discuss evaluations.
“If you are definitive and speaking to anyone prior to coming to the commission, we haven’t had a chance to make the decision yet,” Duncan-Walker said.
Curry disagreed with that assessment. She said she had worked hard to create a new position for someone dedicated to gun violence prevention.
Curry also mentioned that both her scheduled meetings to discuss an evaluation with Duncan-Walker had been canceled. Curry said she hadn’t been able to meet with Duncan-Walker about last year’s evaluation either.
Curry also stood by her previous statements on Duncan-Walker pushing beyond the commissioner role.
“I thought that had pushed in too far,” Curry said. “And quite frankly, I did contact the attorney, I contacted the auditor, and I called the Office of the State Attorney because I didn’t know exactly how to fit that.”
Both Duncan-Walker and Curry said they wanted appropriate staff to join them for any one-on-one conversations in the future. Duncan-Walker also said she was unaware of any report to human resources.
Then, Nee joined the conversation.
He said the discussion started with the charter officer evaluations and had drifted to other topics. But he returned to the late evaluations Duncan-Walker turned in.
Nee said he was shocked to see, at the end of the year, that Duncan-Walker had given him a 1 out of 5 for integrity. He said there shouldn’t be surprises after a whole year of working with an employee. He added that meetings to discuss the evaluation were not kept.
“I can guarantee you that my reputation is important to me,” Nee said. “It’s an earned reputation. It’s reputation that I stand by.”
Nee said the evaluation referenced an event he had no memory of—the police department directly contacting the city attorney’s office about an arrest. Nee said the only event he could find that fit the details within the evaluation concerned Duncan-Walker’s father in 2021, before Nee was appointed city attorney.
“It wasn’t an evaluation,” Nee said. “It was an unsupported, unjustified, unprofessional opinion without the opportunity to discuss it and without going through the process that was established as an evaluation.”
He said human resources shouldn’t have included it and said the process broke down.
As Nee winded down, Ward stepped in to say that Nee and Duncan-Walker should continue the conversation privately and gaveled the meeting to a close.
Under the new resolution, city commissioners have until Nov. 30 to hand in evaluations. If they do not, they won’t be included in the process.
One word describes this whole bunch of Losers, Feckless.
Wokeful voters of a “City that lost Control ” and still support the downward spiral of stability and the uptick in Murders , Rampant Crime, and Taxes . Still spending money like Washington DC . Was bankrupting GRU not a lesson learned? Feckless.
We do not have people on our elected commissions who are capable to act as competent professionals . They do not possess the skills to act in appropriate manners with staff or themselves. Gainesville spirals down everyday and lack of competent elected leadership is the largest cause.
I’m not sure we have the right staff officers but I do know that competent people aren’t going to work for this mess. Guess why we have unbelievably high turnover at the executive staff levels.
Regarding the latest dustup in evaluating one another…Circular firing squads are a thing to behold in our city (where less than 20% of the eligible voters ever even care to vote). People – get your c**p togetherand be professionals.
Last minute ‘evaluations’ are more like torpedoes than evals and exhibit extremely poor management skills. Even elected officials should be subject to termination, or at least being sidelined from having undue influence when they create obstacles to established processes when they don’t perform to good business practices. Or, maybe especially elected officials.
Well, I see all the usual naysayers have weighed in on this. You’re all fired.