Editorial

Berkowitz = Bad Boss

Last weekend was the Annual Super Saturday budget session with Council, Manager, and staff. As mandated by charter, the Manager must present the budget to Council by a certain date and shortly after the transmittal, Council goes through the budget and refines it.

This year, the Council changed the day's events a bit. Instead of hearing from one Department at a time in incremental slots, revolving door-style, Council had asked all the Department Heads to all come so Council, Manager, and Staff all hear the same thing together. Boy, was that a wise move.

Planner Dick Cahill and Assessor Helen Taylor had known something was up all week. Manager Mitchell A. Berkowitz had scripted a memo with CEO Paul White that outlined a major reorganization for Dick and Helen's departments, but discussed the reorganization only with Paul, keeping Helen and Dick in the dark. The proposal was to reorganize the three downstairs departments and put White as the head, and Cahill and Taylor as underlings.

The Assessor is an employee of the Council, not the Manager, and adheres to State statutes under the State Tax Assessor, not the Manager. She does not answer to a department head, she answers to Council and State Tax Assessor.

Berkowitz wrote and assigned Assessor Helen Taylor and Planner Dick Cahill's names to the memos and submitted them to Council. Dick and Helen were unaware of the reorganization proposal the Manager and CEO had cooked up, until they received the memo with their name on it and heard Mr. White announce it to Council.

Mr. Berkowitz and Mr. White then drafted a more fleshed out memo that they kept secret until the moment White was to speak. Berkowitz passed it out to Council at the workshop while White was speaking.

Mr. Berkowitz didn't even have the chutzpah to make the pitch to Council for this Departmental reorganization himself. He had White do it. In his presentation to Council, White said that in his estimation, having been employed by the Town of Gray for seven months, he thinks that the other two employees are deficient. Dick and Helen were in the audience, having to endure ignominy of being sandbagged in public by their boss and peer.

This was a budget meeting any discussion of deficiencies is inappropriate for a peer to make. That's the Manager's job. Further, personnel discussions should be conducted in executive session.

Mr. Berkowitz had proposed the same thing to last year's council, who dismissed it out of hand. So, Mr. Berkowitz's solution this year was to revive the reorganization proposal with new councilors, leave two of three of his people out of the discussion, let an underling bring it forward, and hang Dick and Helen out to dry.

The reorganization proposal leaves responsibility for two of the departments to the new Department head (White) and not the Manager, a nice escape from accountability for him, since that was his lowest rated item in his voluntarily released performance evaluation.

It is a ghastly breach for the Manager to collude with an underling in personnel discussions about others. It was a gross failure of management to discuss personnel issues in a public forum. It is unacceptable for the Manager to cook up a departmental reorganization that excluded input from the two personnel whom it impacts. It is shocking to draft a memo and assign the Assessor's name to it without her knowledge or consent. Not to mention the collateral damage and the ensuing breach of trust that the Manager has created among four town departments. Town Office is in disarray.

What an ugly public display this was.

With Managers like that, who needs enemies.