Island Transit officials hope that hiring a competent, thoughtful executive director will be key to steering the agency down the right road and resolving serious problems with morale among the rank and file.

To that end, the Island Transit board is urging community members to meet the three finalists for the position from 9:30-11:30 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 11 at the Island Transit facility near Coupeville. Afterward, a panel of managers will speak to the candidates and then the transit board will interview them.

That process experienced a little bump this week after the agency sent out a press release announcing the names of four finalists. Members of the public, however, quickly pointed out that a simple Google search revealed that one of the finalists had left a prior agency under a cloud after an investigation of his alleged misuse of public funds.

Island Transit immediately removed the man from the list. Langley Councilmember Craig Cyr, who is both the board president and acting director, said three very strong candidates remain.

They are Melinda Adams, the transportation services manager and former acting director of Everett Transit; Amber Wagner, the manager of the transit planning Division in the City of Asheville/Asheville Rides Transit, North Carolina; and Keith Hall, deputy project manager with Regional Transit District in Colorado.

Once an executive director is chosen, the hard work will continue. The board hired a consultant to investigate the health of the workplace earlier this year, after details of enormous raises for administrators came to light and led to the termination of the executive director and Human Resources director.

Cyr has been executive director since then while Island County Commissioner Melanie Bacon has been working long hours as the interim director of Human Resources. The transit board is made up of the four Island County commissioners and one council member from each municipality.

The organization’s health report created by Nash Consulting, obtained by the News-Times through a public records request, describes a workplace with very low morale and an overwhelming number of employees who lack confidence in leadership.

“A majority of both employees and leaders describe the current culture and atmosphere as one of low trust, with wide-spread negativity and gossip, unfair accountability practices, favoritism and ‘witchhunts,’” the report states.

The survey finds that employees feel their supervisors have created a “low psychological safety environment.”

Cyr said the report “is sobering reading for the Island Transit Board, its employees and the entire community in Island County.”

“Island Transit employees work hard to deliver transit services that Island County expects and it is unacceptable that the work environment has descended to the level described in the report,” he said.

The report describes good news as well, though not without caveats. The survey found that many employees believe that Island Transit “has historically provided an excellent and important service to the community, and they are proud to be part of it.” At the same time, many workers feel that the demand on workers has increased while the level of service to the community has decreased.

Yet with all the problems, a significant majority of employees like their jobs and hope to be working at the agency five years from now. But again, many were uncertain if they would continue working at Island Transit if the management culture doesn’t change.

Those changes are coming, according to board members. In fact, Bacon and Cyr agree that many positive changes have already been made and that the atmosphere is significantly improved.

Bacon said a major cause of the problems in the agency came out of the Human Resources department. She said people lost faith when they went to the department with their concerns and nothing happened.

Bacon said she spent countless hours when she first becoming acting HR director just listening to a long line of employees who wanted to unload their pent-up frustrations. A couple of months later, few people are knocking anymore.

Cyr said he took steps to stabilize the work environment since becoming the acting executive director.

“These steps include restructuring several departments, forming inter-departmental working groups centered on vehicle purchasing and software acquisition, acquiring badly needed software to replace outdated software nearing the end of its useful life, and resetting our relationship with the union that represents our drivers and dispatchers,” he said. “And most especially giving our employees multiple channels to provide feedback to management so that we can listen to their ideas, their frustrations and suggestions which we are already benefitting from.”

While the Nash report outlines a series of ideas for improvements, both Cyr and Bacon agree that it all begins with the right leadership.

“I am confident that these changes and others to be introduced by the new executive director will see a measurable increase in the health of the work environment of Island Transit,” Cyr added.