CLEVELAND, Tenn. – The first-ever evaluation of Cleveland City Manager Janice Casteel is on the City Council’s plate Monday.
Council members are scheduled to review a number of performance measurement tools for the evaluation.
Casteel has never had an evaluation while serving as city manager, a post she has held since 2008. Before that she served several years as the city clerk and financial director.
Honna Rogers, a management consultant for the University of Tennessee’s Municipal Technical Advisory Service, has provided three performance evaluation tools to the City Council and offered to customize the forms to suit the needs of Cleveland’s governing body.
“A personnel evaluation is an extremely helpful tool to an employee and her supervisor,” said Rogers in a letter to the city. She recommended that the evaluation process be conducted annually.
The decision to evaluate Casteel comes after a period of highly publicized turmoil involving the Cleveland Police Department.
In late May, the council voted 6-1 in favor of evaluating Casteel’s performance shortly after businessman Ben Moore publicly criticized her leadership and requested her removal from office. Councilman Charlie McKenzie cast the lone no vote.
Councilman Richard Banks previously said the criticisms voiced by Moore and others are driven by concerns about “Janice Casteel’s ability as it relates to making decisions concerning the leadership of the Cleveland Police Department.”
The department has lost two chiefs to sex scandals in the last 18 months.
Dennis Maddux, who served as police chief for one day, retired last month instead of being terminated. An investigation overseen by the 10th Judicial District Attorney’s Office determined he had violated several departmental policies.
That investigation was launched after Officer Jeffery Griggs caught his wife meeting secretly with Maddux.
“[His] actions embarrassed the City of Cleveland and have destroyed the faith the men and women of our department have in their administration,” Interim Chief Mark Gibson said in a disciplinary report that recommended Maddux be fired.
In December 2013, then-chief Wes Snyder announced he would retire after surveillance video surfaced that showed him rendezvousing with a woman at a rental storage unit. An investigation discovered rugs, pillows, a folding chair and an open bottle of brandy in the love nest.
Banks has said council members’ concerns are evident, considering that they voted 7-0 in March to hire a consultant to evaluate the police department’s operations and policies.
Consultant Larry Wallace, a 40-year law enforcement veteran and former director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, is scheduled to discuss his recommendations with the council on Monday.
The selection of the city’s next police chief “may be the most critical in Cleveland’s history” and should be “conducted with the utmost transparency,” Wallace said in his report.
Paul Leach is based in Cleveland. Email him at paul.leach.press@gmail.com.