Board discusses whether to give County Administrator Pat Oman (2nd from left) bi-annual reviews
DETROIT LAKES, Minn. (KFGO/KDLM) – At Wednesday’s Becker County Board meeting, members argued about whether to give Becker County Administrator Pat Oman a six-month performance evaluation, or wait until the end of the year for his annual performance inspection.
Barry Nelson, chair of the Becker County Board, said the county has the option for a bi-annual evaluation schedule for Oman because it was included in his offer letter.
“It states there should be two, six-month evaluations,” Nelson said. “And we’ve only had the one at the end of the year, so I’d like to do the second one at our next meeting.”
Oman seemed to be caught off guard by the proposed performance evaluation, which was brought up during Nelson’s reports and correspondence time and not listed in the meeting’s agenda.
“This is news to me, Commissioner Nelson,” Oman said. “You guys did a one-year, annual review at the end of the year per the agreement. You guys can do reviews any time that you want, but we’re on schedule to do an annual review each year in correspondence to the county personnel policy. I just want the board to keep that in mind. The next review that’s scheduled for myself is at the end of this year. If you feel you need to do another one, have at it.”
Oman also asked Nelson if the county HR director was informed of the new six-month performance evaluation and then requested the discussion about scheduling the evaluation should be placed on the next meeting’s agenda.
“This should be placed on the agenda at a future meeting and you should have some discussion here,” said Oman. “And like I said, this is a little bit of a surprise and that’s not what boards should be doing.”
Richard Vareberg, commissioner for District 4, said he didn’t think another evaluation was a good use of the board’s time.
“I don’t know why we’d start looking over (Oman) twice a year when we didn’t look over the last guy twice a year,” said Vareberg. “If you want to pick on him, just say, ‘hey, I wanna pick on this guy,’ and that’s what you’re doing. And I don’t want to pick on him. He’s doing a really good job.”
Vareberg also seemed to disagree with Erica Jepson, commissioner for District 1, when she suggested nobody is picking on anybody.
“We can go ahead and waste time on evaluations and start fights instead of working for the county,” said Vareberg. “We can either do our job, work for the county, or we can fight about it. I don’t know, I guess you want to fight about it … we’re having a discussion about picking on Pat, that’s what we’re doing.”
Ultimately, no six-month performance evaluation for Oman or discussion about Oman’s performance evaluation was scheduled for any future meetings after about 10 minutes of lively debate and Nelson moved onto the next agenda item.
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