I was not surprised when I heard the news Tuesday afternoon that the assembly might be firing manager Debra Schnabel.
I wrote members after the meeting that Schnabel deserves the chance to fight to keep her job, but I’m not particularly hopeful she’ll make that effort. Based on what I know, the move to oust Schnabel is not a conservative conspiracy against the town’s liberals. Nor is it part of an ideological battle over the budget or how the town should manage the coronavirus pandemic.
It’s about the way Schnabel goes about her job.
I say this because I visited the manager at her private office on Main Street last September and told her that if I remained on the assembly, it wouldn’t be long before I would ask for her resignation.
I wrote about Schnabel’s shortcomings as manager on this website on Sept. 13. Go and look. Most of the story is there.
The upshot is this: Schnabel is a good manager, knowledgeable, articulate and efficient, but she wants to act as an assembly member, too. She habitually debated assembly members on the dais, stacked meetings with issues she politically supported, and at least occasionally used procedure to defy or subvert the will of the assembly, flouting its authority. She wanted to be the assembly’s employee and its boss.
Some former managers and administrators have suffered this same flaw, and it’s always a deal-breaker.
At least half of our assembly chafed under Schnabel’s management, but we didn’t do enough to squarely address the problem. We’re liberals, after all. We’re understanding and patient. We try to make relationships work. Plus, several of us – including myself – are friends of Schnabel.
A majority of members on the new assembly haven’t been so patient, but I won’t fault them for that. By the end of my term, my own patience was shot.
I’ll take some of the blame for this problem. My Sept. 13 piece here didn’t go far enough, particularly in expressing my exasperation. I was hoping Schnabel would take it to heart. I also should have published it in the Chilkat Valley News. In addition, the 2018 evaluation of Schnabel by the assembly I served on didn’t go far enough to hammer on this point. Schnabel resisted even slight criticism in that review.
I was more concerned than what the assembly evaluation expressed, partly because of a private conversation I had with Schnabel six months previous to the evaluation when I voiced the same concerns. That was December 2017, the same year the assembly hired Schnabel and about six months after a recall election that was fueled partly by our assembly’s hiring of her, a decision that divided the town.
At that meeting, Schnabel seemed deaf to my concerns. Not only that, she was either flip or defiant at the outstart, a bad sign for the future of our new, boss-employee relationship. The first thing she said to me, before I had a chance to say anything, was, “Are you going to fire me?”
I regret that I did not just walk away. Instead, I tried expressing my concern that she was overstepping the boundaries of her job.
Of course we weren’t going to fire her. Our assembly had just walked through hell to get rid of former manager Bill Seward and try to find a better manager to replace him. Firing Schnabel at that time would have made us fools and destroyed any credibility we had left with voters.
Schnabel understood that. So why had she said such a thing? What employee would say such a thing to one of their bosses so early into their job? It was a telling moment, one that underscored Schnabel’s attitude toward even her friends on the assembly. It also foretold the future of her tenure as manager.
This assembly is ready to walk away from Schnabel. I understand why.