By Amanda Estes
Staff Writer
    In an effort to move forward with the evaluations of council appointed city employees, an issue that has caused controversy in the last two months, the South Portland city council unanimously agreed it would be the only body to offer input during the evaluations, scheduled for May 14.
    The council dismissed the 360-degree evaluation, which calls for input from department heads, city employees and community stakeholders in favor of conducting the reviews of City Manager Ted Jankowski, City Clerk Sue Mooney, and City Attorney Mary Kahl, more expeditiously.
    Mayor Claude Morgan said the purpose of Monday’s special meeting was to address concerns in the community about how the council planned to move forward with the issue.
    Initially, councilors were divided over the value of getting input from the public by requesting the three positions create a list of four or five people they last dealt with directly.
    Jim Hughes said he and Linda Boudreau asked for lists of outside contacts and he believed the extra input would be beneficial to employees.
    “I would like to get more input than our own,” Hughes said. “There is a lot more to Sue Mooney’s job that I don’t see.” He said the contacts’ input would be more advisory and that the majority of the input would come from sources not on the list.
    Jim Soule favored involving department heads, but drew the line at what he called “casual contacts.”
    He said if he were in that position, he would seek out people who he could be confident would give him a positive review.
    If input from the public was not given much weight in the process, however, he said he would be willing to include their perspectives.
    “It isn’t important how we do the evaluations,” said Linda Boudreau. “The important thing is we get this done.”
    She said if moving forward means the review has to be scaled back to include only council participation, that should be their next step.
    She said the 360-degree evaluations are a useful tool, but this may not be the best year to implement them.
    Councilor Ralph Baxter said he would be more comfortable with a scaled back review.
    “I’m convinced the seven of us could do it by ourselves and should do it by ourselves.”
    He added that some councilors had no input on the issue of including the public in the process.  
    On Tuesday, City Manager Ted Jankowski said he was looking forward to the council’s review.
    Last month, Jankowski agreed, with reservation, to undergo a six-month review.
    “It will be a little bit more focused [and] a little bit more traditional,” he said. “I think that’s a positive thing.”