The Village of Clyde is in the market for a new chief administrative officer after Annette Schwab resigned late last week.
Schwab submitted her resignation in a one-line letter dated June 13, giving her two-weeks notice and stating her last day on the job would be June 28.
However, she reported she was informed on June 14 that village councillors held a special meeting earlier that day to discuss her resignation. Following that meeting, she was informed her resignation was accepted effective immediately, and she would be paid out until June 28 instead.
Clyde mayor Nat Dvernichuk said it’s “unfortunate” Schwab has chosen to resign, and explained her resignation comes shortly after she received her job performance review from council.
“Council gave her an evaluation, and she was not too happy with it,” he said.
Dvernichuk also confirmed that Schwab’s time with the village was over and that she would be compensated for the two weeks of notice she gave.
Schwab said she has to be cautious what she says regarding what led to her resignation, but confirmed the performance review did lead to her decision to resign.
“I received an extremely unfair evaluation,” she said. “It was not completed and it was extremely unfair.”
She did not give specifics about what was unfair about the evaluation, but explained it was incomplete because there were no recommendations given to help her improve on any potential deficiencies.
Leading up to the evaluation, Schwab said she had been requesting councillors to perform the review, as the Municipal Government Act requires it annually.
Councillors had been putting off doing the review for at least three months, she said. Finally, councillors met on June 11 to do her evaluation, Schwab said, and scheduled a meeting for June 12 to give it to her.
“The mayor came in on the 12th and said, ‘We had a meeting last night and we’re going to meet with you at 6 o’clock,’” she said.
Schwab did not mince words in describing how the review went.
“I went to a Spanish Inquisition for an hour and a half,” she said. “I did not get anything positive.”
The comments Schwab received during the review came as a complete surprise, she said. Up until that point, she had heard nothing but positives about how she had been performing.
“I’ve done amazing work for this village,” she said. “I’ve pulled out a wad of stuff that none of the administrators had done before or that they were struggling up against.”
To have her work seemingly slammed completely out of the blue made Schwab stop and think about what she should do.
After talking with her husband and putting a lot of thought into it, she made up her mind.
“I thought, you know what, I’m just going to leave. That’s all I can do,” she said. “It’s a battle I’m just not going to fight.”
