Floyd County Supervisors set ‘improvement program’ for coordinator

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The Floyd County zoning and safety coordinator underwent a closed-door performance review during Monday morning’s county supervisors meeting.

When the meeting reopened to the public, the board passed a motion requiring Lezlie Weber to undergo an “employee improvement program,” with Supervisor Linda Tjaden overseeing the program and reporting back to the board.

None of the supervisors nor Weber would discuss the specifics of the improvement program or the reasons for it.

After the meeting Weber said, “It’s just an employee evaluation, just to improve me and make me benefit in the long run.”

Weber, who is also the Emergency Management Agency director, said she has another performance review before the Emergency Management Commission on Wednesday.

The supervisors meeting Monday morning, usually a workshop session, was held as a special meeting so that the board could take action on several issues.

There are a number of conditions under the Iowa Open Meetings Law where a public body can legally close a meeting to the public, including, “To evaluate the professional competency of an individual whose appointment, hiring, performance, or discharge is being considered, when necessary to prevent needless and irreparable injury to that individual’s reputation and that individual requests a closed session.”

Randall Tilton, the Floyd County assistant county attorney, was at the meeting.

“Without going into any specifics whatsoever, since we’re in open session, I would like to see the board members discuss where they believe there could be the possibility of needless or irreparable injury to the individual’s reputation,” Tilton said.

Tjaden said she wanted to clarify the part of Weber’s job the board was reviewing — “not the EMA part, it’s the part we’re responsible for.”

“The zoning and safety,” said Supervisor Doug Kamm.

“Exactly,” said Tjaden. “I want to be very clear about that. We did our performance review and we collected everybody’s feedback, and I truly believe this really is something that we really want to go into closed session on, so that we can have an open discussion.”

Supervisor Roy Schwickerath, the current board chairman, said. “I think in fairness to the employee that the request to go into closed session is very appropriate. We don’t want to get into specifics in open session because that’s not fair to the employee.”

The meeting was closed for about half an hour. When it resumed in open session, Kamm made a motion to “approve the employee performance appraisal that we have provided to her.” That motion passed 3-0.

Schwickerath then said, “I’ll make a motion that we appoint Linda to oversee an employee improvement program with Lezlie, and report back to us within the next 90 days on how that program is working.” That motion also passed 3-0.

After that Tilton made it a point to ask the board if they considered the appraisal document “a portion of Lezlie’s personnel records.”

“It would be, and treated appropriately,” Schwickerath said.

The Iowa Open Records Law requires certain public employee information to be public, such as compensation, dates of employment, positions held, educational institutions attended and previous employers, or if an employee was discharged as a result of disciplinary action.

It allows other information, including job performance evaluations, to remain confidential.

In July 2018 the board also held a closed meeting “to evaluate the professional competency of Lezlie Weber.”

After that closed session, the board approved a motion that “a letter of reprimand be written to Lezlie Weber, … on behalf of the Board and directs Weber to obtain counseling for anger management, provide proof of attending those sessions, and that further incidents or behavior is unbecoming of a person in the Emergency Management position.”