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MOLLY MOORHEADThe city's top executive gets high marks from two council veterans, but a newcomer finds faults with his performance.
ZEPHYRHILLS - City Manager Steve Spina's annual evaluations are in, reflecting great disparity among his five bosses' view of his performance.
Liz Geiger, a six-term City Council veteran and perpetual Spina supporter, gave him glowing marks and suggested no changes in how he does his job.
Clyde Bracknell, another longtime council member, also returned high scores.
Cathi Compton and Celia Graham gave Spina a mixture of high and average marks, each noting that he should remain unemotional and unbiased in his decision making.
And Gina King, the newest council member with whom Spina has feuded publicly, returned many low marks and attached a detailed list of changes she thinks the city's top official should make.
Spina was graded on his personal and professional skills, providing effective support to the council, improving services to residents and supervising city operations. Council members rated him on about 50 skills, on a scale of one to five.
He is in his ninth year as city manager. Before that, he was the development director. In next year's budget, Spina, who earns $74,327, is slated to receive a 3 percent raise like all other city employees. His raise, which totals $2,230, is not tied to his evaluation.
King was elected in April on the platform of promising to change the name of Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue back to Sixth Avenue. She found a 1987 city ordinance governing street names, which she said proved the previous council improperly changed the name.
Some aspects of her evaluation of Spina seem tied to that issue, on which he opposed her. King gave marks of 1, or unsatisfactory, on questions about Spina's knowledge of city laws and ordinances and on his ability to remain unbiased and unemotional about issues.
"The city manager should refrain from letting his personal opinions on an issue affect his working relationship with council members and staff," King wrote. "Those personal opinions should also not be reflected in statements made to the media."
She also wrote, "The city manager should be very knowledgeable about the city's laws and ordinances (i.e., street naming). This is an area that needs improvement so council members are not faced with any surprises after making decisions."
King also gave him a 1 in the area of presenting a balanced budget, after an accounting error was discovered in the current budget.
She gave him an overall grade of 2, or "meets minimum expectations."
Graham last year said Spina needed to work on how he handles criticism. This year, she said he has made progress.
"I believe Steve has shown marked improvement in the area of accepting criticism and evaluating that information to make any possible changes for personal improvement," Graham wrote.
But she said he continues to let personal relationships affect his work.
"I believe there are occasions when questionable decisions are reached based on (the) level of friendship with various staff members," she wrote.
Compton has been highly critical of Spina in the past and once tried to fire him. But their relationship has evened out. In her evaluation, she praised his handling of some matters like annexations and acquiring grants but panned others, including the Sixth Avenue matter.
Bracknell wrote few comments but gave Spina mostly 4s and 5s. He encouraged the city manager to talk to the public more and also noted the need to remain unemotional on issues.
Council members named as accomplishments of the last year the opening of the new police station, progress toward building a new library and the opening of the city's new skateboard park in Krusen Field.
Spina acknowledged Tuesday that he does tend to get emotional about certain issues.
"I think there's a certain amount of passion I do bring to the job," he said. "I don't think I'm biased, but I do get emotional."
Overall, he said he was pleased with his bosses' evaluations.
"We've had a volatile year, and we live in a glass house. So I think overall it's pretty good," he said. "I basically feel like I have the endorsement here of four of five. The trick now is to have the discussions based on policy not personalities, and that just takes a little time."