Friday, August 21, 2015

PSTA CEO Brad Miller's Evaluation by PSTA Board Member Bill Johnson



St. Petersburg, Fl
Opinion by: E. Eugene Webb PhD
Coauthor of: So You Want Blog

Each year PSTA Board Members are asked to complete a formal evaluation of the PSTA CEO Brad Miller. 

This Series gives the detailed evaluation by each PSTA Board Member.

Comment Text is taken from Documents obtained from formal Public Records Request with NO edits.

Instructions (To Board Members)
Please take a few minutes to provide a numerical score in the following 10 general performance areas. You may also provide narrative comments as needed. A narrative providing some further explanation of each performance area is provided to help guide you in developing your overall score.

Reviewer: Bill Johnson Councilmember City of Clearwater PSTA Chairperson

1. Organizational Leadership
Rating for this category is a scale of 1 (worse) to 5 (best).   SCORE:  4

COMMENTS: Responded very well to the challenge of improving Governance within the Board by developing the Board’s Path Forward and helping to restructure and energize the Board Committees.

One of the GreenLight Pinellas lessons was that the public didn’t understand the role of
Public Transit. In retrospect this was a lesson learned and one to address in the future. Still it is recognized the multiple stakeholders have divergent expectations.

At this time members of the public closely focus on PSTA operations magnifying stumbles, requiring tighter execution of policies and practices within a public agency. But at the same time innovation and continual improvement is needed for future of the organization.

2. Future Opportunities & Investments
Rating for this category is a scale of 1 (worse) to 5 (best).   SCORE:  4

COMMENTS:  The Path Forward is a great start for the next several years. Beyond that PSTA needs to start planning for five years out. Will require visionary leadership with both the MPO and the Community.

3. Policy Development & Strategy
Rating for this category is a scale of 1 (worse) to 5 (best).   SCORE:  5

COMMENTS:  Development of the Path Forward by including the Board extensively was an inspired act of leadership in bringing the Board together like never before.

4. Policy Implementation
Rating for this category is a scale of 1 (worse) to 5 (best).   SCORE:  3.5

COMMENTS:  Good work on recent initiatives working with the communities to customize service improvements in their area, and at the same time balancing improvements systemwide and still keeping the Board updated. The DHS grant mistake has been thouroughly discussed at Board meetings and needs no further discussion here.

5. Working Relationship with the PSTA Board (As a Governing Body)
Rating for this category on a scale of 1 (worse) to 5 (best).   SCORE:  5

COMMENTS:  See previous comment about inspired leadership in involving all board members in the development of Path Forward. The Challenge is to adapt to the diversity of Board Members’ time availability, experience and personality styles. Excellent idea to offer board training. A continuing challenge is to use the board for Policy decisions such that they do not need to be as involved with details such as small route changes.

6. Working Relationship with Individual PSTA Board Members
Rating for this category is a scale of 1 (worse) to 5 (best).   SCORE:   4.5

COMMENTS:  With the Florida Sunshine Law the CEO is in the unique opportunity to guide the board to consensus at formal board meetings. Mr. Miller is good in this role and more such contributions are expected. Of course not all Board decision will be unanimous. He has activated more discussion at Board Meetings by implementing Informational Presentations on a topic in the month before the actual vote.
decision “Informational Presentations.” This helps refine the final decisions.

7. Financial Resource Management
Rating for this category is a scale of 1 (worse) to 5 (best).   SCORE:   4

COMMENTS:  This year’s financial scrubbing to identify $7 million in unneeded capital, contributed to significantly better financial stability going forward. Improvement opportunity is in grant visibility: what we have, what we could get, and how
this interacts with the operating budget. Good idea to fix at 40% the grant funds that can be used for maintenance. We continually beat the budget by large margins – perhaps PSTA is too conservative – still better than running deficits.

8. Human Resource Management
Rating for this category on a scale of 1 (worse) to 5 (best).   SCORE:  4

COMMENTS: Key is the appointment of highly qualified Director level employees and effective delegation.
Performance bonus in Union Labor contracts was an inspired partnership.
The grievance process could be tightened up especially when a person is subject to a
dismissal. Union certification has been disruptive though not all under control of CEO.

9. Community Leadership & Relations
Rating for this category is a scale of 1 (worse) to 5 (best).   SCORE:  3.5 

COMMENTS:  This duty is second only to Board facilitation and something that can never be too much, for the organization depends on community support as well as synchronization with so many other regional organizations. Key to this is the identification and articulation of the PSTA Mission and the importance of Board decisions and customer personal stories.

Also important is crafting and implementing community and media communications that must be twoway. In retrospect PSTA depended too much on a GreenLight Pinellas
Campaign instead of focusing on PSTA’s fundamental role in the Community.

The CEO is the ultimate voice of the organization; he needs to be more effective and
comfortable in this role with the media even though it may only be used strategically in
limited situations.

10. Project Management
Rating for this category is a scale of 1 (worse) to 5 (best).   SCORE:  4

COMMENTS: Much improvement in Project Managerment. Major progress has been made in the critical coordination with FDOT’s Highway projects. Mr. Miller and his Staff have been much more infulencial in getting FDOT attention in addressing transit requirements as part of their Complete Streets initiatives. Great progress, but of course continual efforts are needed.

E-mail Doc at mail to:dr.gwebb@yahoo.com or send me a Facebook (Gene Webb) Friend request. Please comment below, and be sure to share on Facebook. See Doc's Photo Gallery at Bay Post Photos.

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