Mayor John DeStefano Jr. just relased his annual evaluations of seven highly-ranking city officials for 2011, describing the strengths and weaknesses he saw in each of his employees. These seven officials submitted evaluations of the employees working under them, as well.

In one evaluation, released to the New Haven Independent on Friday, DeStefano told social services czar Chisara Asomugha that her performance over the past year had been “mixed.”

“I think areas in which you feel comfortable such as public health and homelessness advance more aggressively,” he wrote. “Other areas—violence and BOOST seem more uneven.”

Destefano and his deputies are bound by a 2004 court decision, filed by the Freedom of Information Commission, that requires them to release all evaluations upon request. Many of the mayor’s deputies forego any personalized comments, preferring to rate their employees as either “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory.”

New Haven’s chief administrator Rob Smuts ’01, for instance, gives all his employees “satisfactory” ratings, and has the employees initial their forms to indicate that they have discussed performance in private.

“I believe in transparency in government,” Smuts told the Independent after 2010 evaluations were released. But when the evaluations are published on a news site, “that doesn’t exactly lend itself to a useful tool.”

Check out the evaluations here.

MICHELLE HACKMAN