Deena Winter: Talent Plus work 'an interesting journey'

 15 comment(s)  
 E-mail Story
 Print Story
  Share

 digg it!
 Facebook
 del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit

Text Size: 

Tools Sponsor

Seven months ago, Mayor Coleen Seng announced she had hired a local human resources consulting firm to assess the talent within Lincoln Fire and Rescue and help her find an interim and permanent fire chief.

She signed a six-month contract with Talent Plus at a rate of $30,000 per month.

Job No. 1 was to help find the best-qualified person to serve as interim fire chief after former Fire Chief Mike Spadt resigned over the bungled firetruck purchase. That was accomplished when Danny Wright was selected.

[+]Enlarge

Job No. 2 was to help Seng hire a permanent fire chief.

And job No. 3 was to assess the fire department’s administrative positions and establish a management and leadership program.

The six-month contract should have ended in February, but four months into it, the mayor’s office asked Talent Plus to suspend the contract for two months — January and February — while the mayor took the recommendations of Talent Plus for a new fire chief and went through the hiring process. That way, once a new chief was hired, Talent Plus could spend about two months working with the new chief.

John Becker of Talent Plus — a former Lincoln assistant police chief who served as management consultant on the fire department contract — said the firm made its recommendations on a new chief to the mayor in early December.

But by the time the mayor was making plans to interview two candidates for chief in mid-January, the mayoral candidates protested, saying it was too late for her to hire a new chief because a new mayor would be elected in May. The fire chief serves at the pleasure of the mayor, and the mayoral candidates said they would feel no obligation to keep Seng’s appointment in place.

Within two weeks, Seng backed down and decided to leave the position vacant.

Becker expects Talent Plus would give the new chief an overview of its work, but it won’t be the “ongoing, intense relationship” originally envisioned.

Talent Plus will instead wrap up its contract in April after completing leadership training for captains and deputy and assistant chiefs.

So did the company accomplish what it set out to accomplish?

“It’s been an interesting journey,” Becker said. “I think people would have preferred probably to have seen somebody on board who could benefit from the vast amounts of work that was done. I think that still can happen to a certain degree.”

Was there anything Talent Plus could have done to speed up the process so it wouldn’t have been January before the mayor was set to interview candidates? Becker says the company completed its interviews and analysis within three or four weeks of getting the list of qualified applicants from the city.

“Our contract and work has been completed in a timely fashion,” he said. “I think the fire department will have received a great deal of valuable information.”

The mayor’s chief of staff, Mark Bowen, said he was satisfied with the work done by Talent Plus, which is being shared with Interim Fire Chief Wright.

What happened to complaint?

The state Democratic Party kicked off the mayoral campaign season with a bang — or maybe a right hook? — when it sent out a news release in late December saying it planned to file a complaint with the state Accountability and Disclosure Commission alleging Republican mayoral candidate Ken Svoboda violated state law while polling Lincolnites.

In a news release, the party said a Svoboda telephone poll in early December included a number of negative references to Democratic mayoral candidate Chris Beutler and therefore amounted to a campaign message, which would require the “pollster” to identify who paid for the message if asked.

Democrats said at least two people who were polled had asked who was paying for the poll but weren’t told.

So I called the Accountability and Disclosure Commission on Tuesday to check on the status of the Dems’ complaint.

Well, surprise, surprise.

Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission Director Frank Daley said his office never received such a complaint. In fact, his office hasn’t received any complaints from the Democrats this year.

Eric Fought, communications director for the Nebraska Democratic Party, said the party decided not to file a complaint because “our legal counsel didn’t think it was something we should pursue” because it wasn’t clear whether a violation occurred, and it would be difficult to prove because they didn’t have a tape recording of the pollster’s conversations.

“We didn’t want to waste anybody’s time,” Fought said.

But, he said, the party is pleased that “it hasn’t happened again.”

Osborne’s vision?

Way back when the Vision 2015 group’s existence was just making it into the press — in October, when they were still calling themselves the 2015 Visioning Group — word on the street was that Tom Osborne was involved in the group and possibly could end up its spokesman.

Not true, Osborne says.

Last week, he told me he has been invited to one 2015 Vision meeting and doesn’t know all “the particulars” of the high-powered group’s ideas.

“I really have not had any specific relationship with them,” he said.

He doesn’t rule out the possibility of getting involved at some point, however.

“I think it’s a good idea that people get together and try to develop a long-term plan for the city,” he said. “So I like that.”

The 2015 Vision group — which includes corporate CEOs, bank presidents, community boosters and current and former public officials — is promoting 10 “pillars” that it believes will help retain Lincoln’s younger sect.

Among the pillars: a new arena, convention center and hotel in the Haymarket; a research and development corridor stretching from downtown to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus; and relocation of the State Fair to give UNL room to grow.

Beutler: Keep those donations coming

Apparently, mayoral candidate Chris Beutler wants to keep his position as king of the hill, at least when it comes to campaign donations.

Campaign finance reports indicated that by the end of February, Beutler had raised about $140,700 for his mayoral race, compared to nearly $124,000 reported by his primary opponent, Ken Svoboda.

Beutler would like to keep that trend going. In an e-mail to supporters Monday, Beutler implored them to make a donation by day’s end, because at midnight the “books close” on the final campaign finance report that will come out before the April 3 primary election.

“It is important for Chris to show continued progress because opinion leaders, the news media, and Lincoln voters are just beginning to pay attention to the mayor’s race,” the e-mail said. 

Quote of the week

“A luxury once tasted becomes a necessity” — Police Chief Tom Casady, regarding his department’s future need for mobile broadband service. Casady commented during a presentation to a committee studying whether the city should help make wireless Internet service more widely available in the Lincoln area.

Reach Deena Winter at 473-2642 or dwinter@journalstar.com.