By Pepper Parr
March 22nd, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
Responding on behalf of Tim Commisso, City Manager – Further to your requests to Council members and Corporate Communications, I can confirm Brynn Nheiley and Sheila Jones are no longer working for the City.
Sheila Jones was an Executive Director with the city.
Brynn Nheiley Was an Executive Director with the city.
As you know, it’s our policy not to comment on personnel matters, but I would like to note that the City is grateful to Brynn and Sheila for their many important contributions over the years and we wish them the very best in their future endeavours.
These two woman were amongst the very best the city had. Both will be picked up very quickly by some other municipality.
Now to find out more of the why.
At this point there is nothing on the city web site where decisions the Mayor has made under the Strong Mayor legislation would have to appear.
I had a few dealings and interactions with Sheila Jones. My impressions were that she was very bright, knowledgeable and professional. Relative to others at City Hall she was clearly a cut above.
When one sees this much churn in an organization in such a short period of time it doesn’t inspire confidence in the executive leadership. City Hall has had a serious Human Resources problem for a long, long time. This latest episode doesn’t bode well for the future or for this Council.
Forgot to include this in my comment.
https://www.anarchonomicon.com/p/short-take-public-choice-theory-and
As in ‘Wealth of Nations’ but a more modern excerpt -Kulac at Anarchonomicon: Every individual item will be controlled not by the public good or even majority will, but by the narrowest interest that can make it their life’s work and either get rich, or lead a life of sloth by controlling it.
Are we looking at this all wrong? Is the reason staff are exiting an apparent dream job is the realization of the pure and utter tedium of the continual make-work rehash treadmill where career managers just fill every hour of every day with never-ending pointless studies where the same (in it for the long haul) people are involved in every excruciatingly boring day of your life with seemingly no end in sight; it takes a particular kind of person that can spend their entire career happily being unproductive in a busy like manner, they don’t call it a ‘government job’ for nothing.
And the organizational realignment (viz. blood bath continues). I think that things are spinning out of control or someone is. Is this the most recent exercise of Strong Mayor powers and how coincidental coming, as it does, on the heels of the motion to repatriate those powers? Strike while you still have the “hot iron”??
From memory, the senior staff that have left or have been released to this point – James Ridge (an initial purge), Mary Lou Tanner (a follow up purge victim), Angela Morgan, Laura Boyd, Joan Ford, Heather MacDonald, Kevin Arjoon, Kwaab Ado-Adjei, Nancy Shea Nicol, Sheila Jones, Brynn Nheiley, Victoria Al Samedi Hughes, Tim Commisso (I’m outta here) – and these are only those who come immediately to mind.
Editor’s note: Let’s be fair. Some of these people retired after decades of service.
Yes Editor but they decided to do so within weeks of each other … hmmm.
Editor: doesn’t mean they didn’t decide to retire now for the reason of toxic workplace etc. and that they would have stayed longer had things been different. We don’t know, but there is a pattern here which suggests something is majorly wrong inside. It really isn’t normal to lose this many people in such a short time.
Audits that are kept from the public eye rather than help the Audit Committee comply with its duty are key to a full understanding of our present situation. Our efforts to present such audits are well documented , from 2015 on. They have always failed; stymied by a small but powerful group of elected, contracted and staff alike. We did our best to publicize the growing list of issues that needed addressing by our city and continue to carry hope in our hearts that truth will out and believe that hope will not be disappointed.
Time to clad city hall in red bricks to more closely resemble the Kremlin. The mayor was quite emphatic, during Tuesday’s council meeting, that there were no unannounced impending changes. Is this a purge of staff members collaborating with the mutineers or did the mayor misrepresent the facts on Tuesday?