By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

                Williston has an open and transparent way of evaluating its two top administrators for possible pay raises, which the press views in a positive way, but the evaluation part of the process came under intense scrutiny this week when it was questioned by the mayor.

            Clerk Latricia Wright is in the process of being evaluated for her job performance over the past year to determine how much of a raise she receives. City Manager Terry Bovaird, hired late last year as the city’s top administrator, hasn’t worked long enough in his job to be evaluated for a raise.

            In the first phase of the evaluation, the board uses take-home question-and-answer forms to assess the job performance of the city manager or city clerk. When the council evaluation forms are tallied and an average is reached, the number becomes the raise. The council discusses the results of the evaluation publicly.

            “In Florida we have this lovely thing called the Sunshine Law, so we have to discuss such private things in public,” said Council President Debra Jones.

            Each of the five council members was told at Tuesday’s board meeting to rate Wright’s overall job performance in a variety of categories. Their individual grade totals for Wright will range from 1 to 5. When all five of the council member grades are added together, the average becomes the percentage of Wright’s pay raise.

           Her pay raise could range from a modest 1 percent, meaning she needs much improvement, to 5 percent, which means she can just about do no wrong. Her raise depends on the numbers assigned by the five council members on the five evaluations and the average that results. Councilman Zach bullock noted Wright has done an “outstanding job” in his view.

            Mayor Charles Goodman, who is being asked to evaluate her as well, said he thinks it’s a bad idea for the council to tie evaluation numbers to the pay raise. He felt the council could be influenced in how it evaluates Wright knowing the numbers will be used to give her a raise. He thinks the council should fill out the evaluations and then come up with a raise separately by discussing it among themselves publicly.

            “I think it’s a mistake to tie the evaluations to the raise. If you want to give her a raise, look at the merits and give her a raise,” Goodman said.

            Goodman isn’t a voting member of the council and the numbers he assigns to his evaluation won’t be included with the other five council members, but Jones said she wants Wright to know what Goodman is thinking because she has to work with him, too.

            Jones said the council has always used evaluations to determine the size of the raise.

            “I don’t know how many employers you’ve had,” Jones said to Goodman, “but the past three I’ve had, did it that way. That’s why I want to do it that way,” she said.

            Council members tossed out a number of different alternatives for calculating a raise but ultimately circled back to the way they’ve always done it by tying the raise to evaluation numbers.

            Councilman Elihu Ross said everyone on the council knows who does a good job and who doesn’t do a good job for the city. It’s not a big secret.

            “We don’t have to make an issue of it playing number games,” he said.

            Wright pointed out that the question of how raises are given to the city’s two charter officials, the clerk and city manager, always seems to get discussed when the clerk is up for a pay increase.

            “For the last two years, whenever it comes to the clerk’s evaluation for a raise, it’s always an issue,” she said. “I watched last year when other employees got a raise and nothing was said, but when it comes to the clerk, it’s always an issue and that’s what I just observed.”

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City of Williston Regular Meeting February 7, 2023; Posted February 12, 2023