NOCFA Chief, Jeremy Lintz HOLLY TOWNSHIP, Michigan – For the second time in three years, North Oakland County Fire Authority Chief Jeremy Lintz was fighting for a fair shake – once again over job performance evaluation scores given by members of the NOCFA Board of Directors.
Board members were asked to complete an evaluation on Lintz’ job performance, rating him on various tasks under the categories of management and leadership, operational involvement and response readiness, and specific performance objectives. In all, board members each could give Lintz a total combined score of up to 63 points, along with feedback on how he can improve.
While most board members completed Lintz’ entire evaluation packet by the Jan. 23 deadline, Rose Township Treasurer and NOCFA Board member Sue Slaughter provided only the summary page of the packet, giving Lintz a total score of 34 points with no feedback or reasoning for the score.
Slaughter’s score averaged with the others left Lintz with a composite score of 52.1, enough for him to receive a 3 percent merit increase, bringing his current annual salary to $65,632.
Under the contract that was approved by the NOCFA Board in June of 2008, Lintz is to receive salary “step” increases every third year, and annual merit increases up to 4 percent based on the evaluations he receives from the board.
Although the board officially accepted the evaluation scores during the Jan. 23 meeting, Slaughter agreed to a four-day deadline extension in which she said she would complete the packet in its entirety, including providing comments and feedback for Lintz.
When Slaughter failed to turn in a packet on Friday, Lambert scheduled a special meeting to discuss the matter on Jan. 31.
On Slaughter’s scoring of Lintz’ evaluation
Having faxed Lintz’ evaluation to Lambert at 3:18 p.m. on Jan. 31, Slaughter included a letter stating that she would be unable to attend the special meeting due to a family issue.
Referring to Slaughter’s submitted evaluation, Lambert noted several scores written by Slaughter that were accompanied by a question mark.
“Everything leading up to this particular moment hasn’t been easy,” Lambert said. “It hasn’t been an easy process like I believe it should be.”
This incident isn’t the first time board members have objected to the way in which Slaughter completed Lintz’ job performance evaluation.
In 2009, Slaughter and the board’s Citizen at Large, Robert Kast handed in un-scored evaluations. At the time, Slaughter said she didn’t believe the evaluation should be tied to the point system, and also said that due to economic hardship, the fire fund didn’t have the additional monies to offer anyone a merit increase. Kast agreed, saying he felt it was fiscally irresponsible to offer Lintz a merit increase until the economic climate became more certain.
“Although some areas could be considered subjective and therefore would be difficult to debate as to why Ms. Slaughter gave Chief Lintz a low score – for example whether he communicates effectively with board members – it could be a subjective opinion,” NOCFA Board member Janet Leslie said of Slaughter’s 2011 evaluation. “However, on at least one occasion, she scored unreasonably low considering that it really is not a subjective topic under ‘Administration, Business Performance and Implementation,’” she added. Leslie said the item implements and monitors policies and procedures to ensure compliance with generally accepted accounting practices. “She scored the chief with a 1 with a question mark, and as we know, this is after the department received a perfect audit,” Leslie said. “There were no remarks – not even any recommendations for improvement, so this is just inexplicable how you could on that issue, give the chief a 1 out of 3 without any explanation, and to me, it suggests that even though there was the opportunity for an objective evaluation, this was scored very subjectively and obviously, quite negatively.”
In reviewing Slaughter’s packet during the meeting, fellow NOCFA Board member, Dianne Scheib-Snider noticed discrepancies with the evaluation, and determined that certain pages of the packet submitted by Slaughter were actually old pages from Lintz’ 2010 evaluation, despite the fact that Slaughter had included the 2011 cover page.
On Slaughter’s pattern of behavior
Lambert said it is his belief that Slaughter’s low scores on Lintz’ evaluation reflected a previous incident in which Slaughter allegedly interfered with a matter Lintz was handling regarding a Rose Township resident illegally dumping household trash into a NOCFA dumpster located at Station 3 on Rose Center Road.
Lintz contacted the Michigan State Police after finding several pieces of mail in the trash revealing the identity and address of the responsible resident. Lintz said the trooper was to either ask the resident to remove the garbage from the overflowing dumpster, or pay the $40 fee to empty it.
“I think it absolutely led up to where we are now,” Lambert said. “Ms. Slaughter went ahead and called the Michigan State Police and told the trooper there that everything was fine, when in reality, it was the chief’s matter to deal with it as it was a daily administrative function of the fire department,” he added. “She completely overstepped her authority as a NOCFA board officer.”
Lintz said the dumpster issue is just one of many times Slaughter has overstepped her authority. “Last year, unbeknownst to the board, she went straight to the auditor while he was over at Rose Township doing business with them, and had a meeting which was so inappropriate that the auditor came to me the next day and told me about it because he thought I should know,” Lintz said. “She went to the auditor and told him to look more closely into the credit cards, inferring that I was making purchases that I wasn’t supposed to make, or somehow buying more property,” he added. “The last time she did this with the evaluation, the board set a resolution a couple months afterward stating that all board members shall follow the process, and turn it in on time so this wouldn’t happen again, but it did.”
Leslie said she also recognized Slaughter’s “pattern of overstepping boundaries.”
“It’s a pattern of overstepping her bounds as a NOCFA board member, and I think if it weren’t for that pattern, perhaps we wouldn’t be sitting here tonight, but obviously, we all have concerns if this behavior continues,” she said. “I think we have a board member who appears to operate by her own rules, and as we all know, a board cannot function with five individual sets of rules.”
Final decision on Lintz’ composite score
Lambert asked board members whether they would be willing to accept the review submitted by Slaughter, even though it was submitted past the Jan. 27 deadline.
NOCFA attorney, David Lattie asked Lambert for some clarification on the 2009 board resolution in which Slaughter’s evaluation was deemed to be “non-responsive,” and was disregarded as a contribution to the score averaging process for Lintz’ 2009 evaluation.
“Do you consider that to be available to you under this circumstance where you got the evaluation late and it doesn’t seem to match up to the same evaluation criteria that the rest of you had, would the board consider that non-responsive and take similar action as they did in 2009 and disregard the average?” Lattie asked.
“Absolutely sir, I would consider that,” Lambert said. “Even if this evaluation were to be 100 percent complete, in my opinion, I still would not accept it because it due to the fact that it came in after a deadline that Ms. Slaughter and the board agreed upon and committed to,” he added. “Monday night we talk it over – the board agrees by consensus to give her another four days, and she lets the deadline elapse – it was incomplete to start with, it’s still incomplete now.”
Lambert made the motion to drop Slaughter’s 2011 score from the pool of evaluations, elevating his average score from a 52.1 to a 56.6. While the increased score would raise Lintz’ merit increase to 4 percent, Lintz declined.
“If the board does decide to do this and changes it from 3 to a 4 percent, it only amounts to an approximate $750 difference,” he said. “I wouldn’t worry about that.”
With a second from Scheib-Snider, the motion passed 4-0. “The chief will stay with 3 percent monetary increase however the performance reviews will reflect a 4 percent merit increase and a composite score of 56.6,” Lambert said.
On having Slaughter removed from the NOCFA Board of Directors
Lambert asked Lattie if there is any verbiage in the NOCFA Rules of Incorporation that allow a board to remove a member.
Referring to Article 8 of the document, Lattie said a board member is deemed to have vacated his or her seat on the board by having three consecutive unexcused absences. Additionally, Lattie said a board member can be removed if the appointing municipality of the member in question recognizes a pattern of behavior that demonstrates the inability of the member to participate in assigned committee projects and/or regular or special meetings in a manner that sufficiently represents the municipality.
“You as a board can take action if you have three consecutive unexcused absences, but it’s up to the appointing municipality to decide when (the board member) is being essentially non-responsive or not participating,” Lattie said. “You don’t have the ability to remove somebody other than the absent situation, but you certainly have the ability to communicate to the appointing municipality – in this case, Rose Township – the difficulties that are being caused by their appointed member.”
Lambert made the motion to draft a letter to the Rose Township Board of Trustees, asking that they strongly consider replacing Slaughter with another individual.
While no members of the board supported Lambert’s motion, Kast suggested drafting a letter to the Rose Township Board of Trustees simply explaining the situation, rather than asking the board to take action.
“My feeling is that it needs to have more teeth,” Leslie said. “I would like to see a resolution come from this board and I think a letter doesn’t indicate the conviction that this board has – that there is a pattern here that is creating a problem,” she added. “A letter doesn’t hold the same weight as a resolution coming from this board.”
Citizen at Large, Robert Kast
“I’m not condoning anything Sue Slaughter has done – I’m not taking one side or the other,” Kast said. “Obviously, we all disagree with some things she has done, but I don’t believe that we as a fire board should be in the position of telling two townships that make this fire board exist what to do,” he added. “It’s a bad precedence to set, and we shouldn’t do it.”
Lambert made the motion to allow Leslie who serves as the NOCFA Board Secretary, to draft a resolution on the issue for Rose Township, recommending that they re-evaluate the board participation of Sue Slaughter.
In a vote of 4-0, the motion passed.
The board in its entirety is expected to review and approve the resolution at its next regularly scheduled meeting for 7 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 27 at the Rose Township meeting room, 9080 Mason St., Holly.
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