The Odessa City Council will hold a special meeting Tuesday evening to discuss the formation of a committee that will help identify the city’s next city manager and to discuss a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats or SWOT analysis performed by T2 Professional Consulting.
However, at least one Odessa City Councilmember has serious concerns about the qualifications of the group, especially one member of the group who calls himself a “mental scientist.”
Councilmember Steve Thompson said he has been asking for the resumes, degrees and licenses of the members of T2 since Mayor Javier Joven hired them for $338,000 Dec. 14, the day after the council voted 5-2 to fire City Manager Michael Marrero and City Attorney Natasha Brooks without explanation.
After hearing T2’s Hank Seitz’s presentation at the city council meeting last week, Thompson said he has doubled his efforts.
“I still think they’re frauds. I thought they were frauds from the beginning. I don’t trust them. They’re not forthright,” Thompson said.
If someone tells you they’re a neurosurgeon you wouldn’t let them perform brain surgery until you check them out, Thompson said.
“I’ve been skeptical of these guys all along. It’s been cloak and dagger. They say they can’t get me resumes. I can’t vet them. I never got a chance to. The mayor signed a contract and paid them and I don’t know who they are. My job as a councilmember is to vet that stuff to make sure we get what we pay for,” Thompson said.
Joven has said T2 will help the city find Marrero’s replacement, but will also analyze all city positions to ensure they are all needed and/or filled by the most qualified personnel.
The contract itself states T2 will “ provide professional services for the benefit of the interim city manager, including advising and consulting, organizational analysis and training on leadership transition management.”
Thompson voted against hiring T2 noting the group was not vetted by all of the city council members. He said Joven’s signing of the contract was a clear violation of the city’s charter.
Under Article 1-4 of the City Charter, “all ordinances, resolutions and contract documents shall, before presentation to the council, have been reviewed as to form and legality by the city attorney or the city attorney’s authorized representative, and shall have been examined and reviewed for administration by the city manager or the city manager’s authorized representative.”
In addition, under City Charter, Section 30, city council approval of contracts must occur under certain circumstances, one being “contracts requiring the appropriation of funds.”
Joven signed the contract just hours after Marrero and Brooks were terminated and Interim City Manager Agapito Bernal and Interim City Attorney Dan Jones were appointed.
Bernal did not sign it and Jones initialed it on Dec. 16, two days after T2 received a $50,000 initial payment.
Dr. Hank
During last week’s city council meeting, T2’s Hank Seitz said that instead of relying entirely upon resumes and interviews, which are unreliable, he helps organizations spot people who have the necessary talents to perform the job and are motivated to do so. By doing so, employers can expect to see a 30% increase in productivity and a 50% increase in job retention, he said.
Seitz, who said he goes by “Dr. Hank,” asked the council to put together a panel of “subject matter experts” he will work with via Zoom for 60-90 minutes to help them determine the key talents, motivators and behaviors for the city manager position.
They’ll go through an assessment process and those assessments will be electronically averaged to come up with a job match, Seitz said. Then, before meeting any candidates they’ll then run a “tri-metrics” on the candidates that qualify best based on their resumes.
“I can take a look at that 25-page report and on the first page, I can tell you who’s the most qualified candidate for that position without ever meeting them, interviewing them. I don’t even need to see their resume,” Seitz said.
The panel should be comprised of two city council members, two department heads and two citizens, Seitz said.
Seitz described himself to the council as a mental scientist, behavioral psychologist and a “certified analyst in a lot of different areas of the human being.” His description varies from LinkedIn, Amazon and his own website, however.
John Lucas, assistant vice chancellor of communications at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, was unable to determine if Seitz is a UW-Madison graduate as he contends. However, Lucas did say UW-Madison does not offer a degree in “mental science.”
The Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council has no record of a license being issued to a Hank or Henry Seitz. The council provides licenses to psychologists, marriage and family therapists, professional counselors and social workers. The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, which provides licenses to behavior analysts, also does not show a license for a Hank or Henry Seitz.
Seitz has written at least 14 books with titles such as “Your Royal Path to Riches,” “Think, Feel and Grow Rich,” “The Happiest Man in the World,” “Easy Money Easy Life,” “Health Wealth & Success,” “Walk with God,” “Conscious Mind Treatment,” “13 Easy Steps to More Money” and “Your GPS to Success.”
Public records requests
The Odessa American has twice filed a Texas Public Information Act request seeking copies of emails, texts and instant messages exchanged between T2, Joven, city council members and city staff since Nov. 1, 2022. The information was requested to ascertain, at least in part, when negotiations began between T2 and the city.
Joven has repeatedly said T2 has more than 125 years of combined experience, but the OA has been unable to find a single news story anywhere about T2. Michael Wilson, the owner of T2, claimed in an email to the OA that 100 different private and public organizations have used the company’s services, including some “Tier One” cities. The less than 2-year-old company is run out of a residence in Fort Worth.
In the initial go-around, the OA simply received emails setting up a Jan. 11, 2023 meeting. A request for any notes, recordings or minutes pertaining to that meeting has since been sent to the Texas Attorney General’s Office for an opinion by city staff.
Following a separate request, the OA received a copy of an email former Assistant City Manager Aaron Smith emailed himself containing a link to opencorporates.com about T2. The paper also received an email former Assistant City Manager Cindy Muncy sent to Bernal and Jones asking them to acknowledge with their signatures they approved Joven’s request for a $50,000 downpayment for T2, which was in apparent violation of city policy and procedures for professional service agreements.
In the document Muncy noted nonbudgeted items of $50,000 or more must be voted on by the Council before the contract is executed and the total cost of the contract was $338,000 per year. She noted for the record Jones said it was his legal opinion the procedures they followed to obtain the contract were acceptable.
The OA has since learned from Joven himself why the OA has received zero emails between himself and T2.
In a Feb. 14 interview, Joven said he destroys his emails.
“The one thing that I was taught, you get an email, you destroy it, you don’t keep anything,” he said. “This is what’s being taught in every faction, destroy this, this, this and this, you just delete. You keep nothing.” By the way, that statement was recorded by the reporter — just in case Joven wants to dispute that he ever said it.
Public officials are required to keep their email dealing with public business regardless of whether the email is from a government-issued email address or a private one.
The OA also learned this week T2 is fighting the release of emails as well.
Proprietary info?
The Fort Worth law firm of Laura Elkind provided the OA a copy of a letter to the Texas Attorney General’s Office arguing T2 should not have to provide three emails and their attachments to the OA because they contain “certain property and proprietary rights” of T2 and Wilson.
The attachments include confidential and proprietary documents, a study and a technical guide, she wrote.
She argues that under the government codes, the information is exempt from disclosure because “the owner of the trade secret has taken reasonable measures under the circumstances to keep the information secret” and the information derives independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known or readily ascertainable.
In all capitals, Elkind writes, “T2 is not aware of any director competitor in the government recruitment and selection sector using the selection tool to which the technical guide pertains. This gives T2 a significant competitive advantage in the government recruitment and selection sector. The study is necessarily associated with T2’s unique processes and approach and bears on the effects, if any, its selection tool has on the employment process. Disclosure of the email, the study, and the technical guide would cause substantial competitive harm to T2.”
Thompson said Wilson told him this week that Seitz is certified by Target Training International Success Insights, a Scottsdale, Arizona company that, according to its website, “applies a multi-science approach to an ever-evolving suite of tools that support the employee journey.”
When Thompson demanded additional information, Wilson emailed him back to say he’d forwarded his request to Seitz. As of Friday evening he had not received any additional information, Thompson said.
The information he is requesting is not proprietary, Thompson said.
“We have a right to see his credentials,” Thompson said.
On a positive note, Thompson said he was given the results of employee surveys completed at the behest of T2.
“They were asked where the weak spots and strong spots are in your organization. That was all pretty good, but it wasn’t anything special. I had questions about some of the data, but it was based off of 400 or so people,” Thompson said.
He expects to see a report Tuesday night summarizing the results of those surveys.
