By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON  May 29, 2012  They appear to have changed something, maybe it was the water, maybe it was the music – maybe someone spiked the water – whatever – the city and the hospital administration are about to do kissy, kissy and make up.

Mario Joanette, vice president communications for the Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital,  attended the Budget and Corporate Services Committee where Council was given an Update on where things are with the hospital.  We wish to report that they are much, much better.

We can now tell you what the $60 million the city is going to give the hospital is going to be spent  on.  We got an upgrade from having our money spent on a parking garage.  The funds the city gives the hospital will be spent on things like operating room equipment, an MRI machine perhaps, furnishings for some of the hospital rooms  – all stuff  the hospital would have had to buy out of their own funds – will now be paid for with money the city provides.

Here roughly is the way that will work – the hospital will buy a piece of equipment and tell the city what it cost and the city will write a cheque and will keep writing cheques until they have spent $60 million.  Pretty straight forward.

The city will also work out a list of the kinds of things they would like to pay for – we don`t want to be seen as the donours of just vases for the hospital waiting room.

It took months to get this worked out and over that period of time the hospital has come to realize that the city is just not going to roll over and let the hospital dictate what happens to our money.  It has been a struggle.  Councillor Taylor called the agreement that has been reached a “great compromise”. The hospital administration has had and continues to have a problem with transparency.

During the Committee meeting Councillor Dennison asked how much had been raised at the Saturday evening Gala.  Joanette strode to the podium and said – he wasn’t able to say – but he was able to say that they  raised more this year than last and they had their largest event ever.  Now Councillor Dennison has been at this game a lot longer than Joanette and he asked – `How much did you raise last year?  Joanette couldn’t duck that one – $250,000 he  replied.  So this year the Gala raised more than  $250,000 – Wow, talk about pulling teeth from a hen.

Councillor Dennison knew he was on a bit of a roll and he asked” how much had been raised in donations to the re-development fund?  That turns out to be $12 million – THAT is a very good number.

No announcement from the hospital Foundation about that number.  There have been no announcements – the hospital to the best of our knowledge hasn’t said anything – yet.  Actually, it is not the hospital that should be making that kind of announcement – it should be coming from the President of the Hospital Foundation Anissa Hilborn or the Chair of the Fund Raising Committee – Brian Torsney.

Something still isn’t running the way it should at the hospital.  For reasons that aren’t quite clear yet,  the hospital isn’t tied to the community.  That responsibility rests with the hospital board – the members of that Board are the people that are the public’s link to the hospital – but for some reason – that Board chooses not to say much.  They seem to defer to the hospital administration.  And that has resulted in a rocky relationship between the city and the hospital.  It need not be that way – it shouldn’t be that way – but it is.  Unfortunate.

However, there is hope on the horizon.  The hospital will hold its Annual General Meeting in about three weeks and Mayor Goldring will be the keynote speaker.  That may be the first step in closing the rift between the two institutions and will give the Mayor an opportunity to talk about the kind of relationship the city needs with its hospital.

The agreement on where the city’s money will be spent is expected to be final sometime in June when a revised Contribution Plan goes to Budget and Corporate Services July 10^th and to city Council July 16^th.

With that irritant out of the way the next hurdle is the site plan for the re-development.  That kind of business usually gets handled by the Planning department but it has been un-delegated and is now handled by council  Planners have been meeting weekly with hospital people and they expect they will be ready to come to Council for site plan approval sometime in the fall.  There is considerable pressure to get the site plan approved so that the construction can begin.

Councillor Craven threw a small spanner in the wheels on that one when he reminded Council that the project could not go to a committee for approval until it has been presented to the community and that there are no meetings in August.  That’s a little awkward isn’t it?

What matters for the citizens of Burlington is that their Council has assured itself that the $60 million the city is putting up for the redevelopment will be spent on things the citizens will find useful.  We don’t have to worry about bricks and mortar or watching milestones.  They buy a piece of equipment for a hospital that has already been built and we pay for it.

Later in the year the city gets to see the site plan and approve it.  There will be sufficient public involvement.  The hospital has retained a “design consultant” to prepare a “campus plan” showing the full development of the site that will include the parking garage/administration building and the hospital expansion/redevelopment.

The city planners and hospital people met recently and held a Design Charette to talk through different ideas on what could work and what wouldn’t work.  Submission of the draft campus plan is expected by the end of June – which is where Councillor Craven sees the log jam – if it comes to the city at the end of June it has to go to the community and then to a council committee and then to Council and all that has to happen during the month of July – and that’s not possible with the meeting cycle Burlington uses.

Watch for a Special Council meeting to bunt this one home.

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON  April 18, 2012

In a lengthy report to the Budget and Corporate Services committee we got a look at what was a rather messy and less than collaborative working relationship between the city and hospital officials.  The sticking point was the details behind what is called the “Contribution Agreement”  which is the document that will set out when, and under what circumstances, the city will send funds to the hospital for the re-development of the Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital (JBMH).

The city was not about to just write out million dollar cheques and blithely send money collected from taxpayers to the hospital. They wanted to know what the money would be used for.

When the province decided back in 2008 that the community had to put up $120 million to pay for the re-development,  the city said it would put up $60 million and the hospital Foundation would raise $60 million.  The redevelopment project includes a new tower on the hospital site, new operating rooms and in-patient beds, a new intensive care unit, as well as renovations to diagnostic services and to the emergency department.  That “tower” will be part parking garage, several floors for the Halton McMaster Family Medicine unit and offices for the hospital foundation.  Expect them to get the top floor of the building with a fabulous view out over the lake.

Burlington is putting up $5 million additional dollars for the Family Medical space – that was part of the agreement that included the School of Business which was supposed to be in the downtown core but ended up on the South Service Road.

At a city council meeting last year,  JBMH President and CEO Eric Vandewall said the hospital would match the city’s  money “dollar for dollar”, which at the time seemed to satisfy city council.  But then it became less than clear as to just what the city’s money was going to be used for.  The hospital had not raised its share of the $120 million but it had an urgent need to put up a parking garage and the city got the sense that its money was going to pay for the building of that garage.  The city began to see a situation where it would pay for the building of a parking garage and then see the province plead poverty and cancel the re-development.

At that time there was no iron clad guarantee from the provincial government that the hospital re-development was really going to be fully funded.  Everyone was saying it was going to be funded – but there was nothing definitive from the province.

The city put together a “working group”   that consisted of the Mayor, Councillors Craven and Meed Ward.  It later added the Mayors adviser, Frank McKeown to the team.  Problem with the working group was that it just didn’t work and people on the city side of things realized there had to be a structural change.  The mayor was increasingly being drawn into administrative level matters and it had the potential to do significant political damage.

The city began to realize that they needed some help as well,  and decided to bring in two levels of support.  A lawyer with the skill set and experience needed to deal with hospital construction contracts and a consulting firm that would advise the city on how to deal with Infrastructure Ontario, which is the organization that is actually going to handle the construction.

Burlington had learned some very valuable lessons from the construction of the Pier.  They did not have the talent or people with the very specific experience in putting together complex contracts on staff full time.  With the Pier they learned to bring in the outside help for the period of time it was needed.

The new organizational arrangement the city has put in place is designed to overcome the difficulties the city has had with the people on the hospital side.  On too many occasions the hospital cancelled meetings which, from the city’s perspective, were critical.  It was all about money, taxpayers money and Mayor Goldring was just not prepared to see the money roll out of city hall without knowing what was going to be done with taxpayers dollars .

Councillor Sharman put things in perspective when he put a direct question to Goldring and Meed Ward asking:  “Are you satisfied that the working group provided objective independent representation that was in the best interests of the city and its taxpayers”.  Sharman clearly thought that the information that came out of the working group was not as objective or independent as it should have been.  Councillor Meed Ward blanched when the question was put to her.  The Mayor said that the new alignment between the city and the hospital was designed to overcome the problems.  Councillor Craven who was chairing the meeting didn’t say a word.

The working group developed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that was sent to JBMH last December.  A draft Contribution Agreement was received by the city from JBMH shortly after that.  City staff scheduled a series of meetings for January and February 2012 to begin negotiations with the hospital.

Prior to the first formal negotiation meetings, city staff met informally with JBMH staff to discuss the overall project time line, expectations of the parties and to identify if there were any significant areas of concern for JBMH.  City staff were advised that there were no major issues.  The city advised the hospital that it was fully behind the redevelopment, but that a thorough due diligence process was necessary prior to signing a contribution agreement in order to protect the taxpayers investment.

Shortly after JBMH staff advised that they had significant concerns with the draft MOU.  Specifically they were uncomfortable with any conditions related to the release of funds, given that not all factors related to project timing were within their control.  JBMH asked that the scheduled negotiation meetings in January be cancelled.

None of this was made public at the time.  The city continued to salt away taxpayers money and put out press releases saying all was well.

The city took the draft MOU and turned it into a Letter of Understanding (LOU), a document that endeavored to clarify the roles and responsibilities of both parties and sent that along to the hospital. JBMH then cancelled the negotiation meetings that were planned for February and didn’t respond to the LOU.

This is all very confusing to the average citizen who just wants to know that there will be a bed for them should they require medical attention – the average citizen would ask – “does all this really matter to me.  Let the people we hire work all this out.”

One can take that attitude, but had the Jackson administration and the one before it insisted on the hard nosed due diligence the Goldring administration is demanding – of the hospital now, the city wouldn’t have the mess it has had to go through with the Pier.  There is a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things.

Thus when Councillor Meed Ward put forward motion to take out the strategic consultants and cut back the amount for legal fees by more than half – the only vote she got was her own.  It was embarrassing and was pretty clear, look at what was wrong with the working group.

What adds to the confusion in all this is that Meed Ward is a member of the hospital board.  It is difficult to see how she can be true to the interests of the hospital and true to the interests of the city at the same time.  She might say that the two are the same, which is a very naive view of the way different organizations work together. City manager Jeff Fielding pointed out to Council that in his 15 years as a city manager he had not handled deals at the $60 million level.  This is big stuff and we need to be very careful.

The original working group was tasked with seeking public input on the municipal contribution to the redevelopment of the hospital, coordinate communications with the public and ensure regular dialogue between the hospital and the city.  What transpired wasn’t so much dialogue but rather turf wars and consistent misunderstandings between the hospital and the city with the public being told next to nothing

The public didn’t get very many chances to say what it felt – other than they wanted a newer hospital.  The city fell down a little on letting its taxpayers know just how messy things had gotten.  The Mayor just kept putting out statements that the city was 100% behind the re-development of the hospital. His office  still has some things to learn about communicating.

However, the report that went to the city’s Budget and Corporate Services committee laid everything out, and while less than fully transparent, it does indicate that things were messy and getting worse so they put in a new organizational structure and asked for the technical and legal support they needed.

It was while this was being discussed that Councillor Meed Ward then proceeded to figuratively blow her brains out publicly when she chose to oppose two of the recommendations staff had come forward with.

While doing so she managed to create a situation where there were four different amendments in play and a chair that really wasn’t sure just where the proceedings were as he worked with his Clerk who slowly untangled the knot the committee had gotten itself into.  Meed Ward had a motion, Councillor Taylor had an amendment and Sharman had an amendment to the Taylor amendment.  It was beginning to look like a high school debating club.

The issues that were being debated were on the four recommendations set out in the report which were:

Retain a lead negotiator to draft the contribution agreement. The negotiator would have experience in provincial funding and would understand the role of Infrastructure Ontario and alternative finance projects.

Hire a strategic consultant to ensure a transparent, accountable and rigorous process for signing an agreement with the hospital.

Bring the planning portion of the hospital redevelopment—site plan approval—to City Council for discussion.

Disband the city’s hospital redevelopment working group.

The costs involved for the legal counsel and strategic counsel amounted to $50,000, which Meed Ward thought was far too much money.  She didn’t think the city needed anyone to tell then how to deal with Infrastructure Ontario but that if there were questions to be answered then Infrastructure Ontario would send some people out to talk to Council.

Scott Stewart did point out the Infrastructure was not exactly a neutral party in all this.  He got that right.  Infrastructure Ontario is going to spend the $60 million taxpayers are going to come up with and the city wants their own expert helping them through this.  No more pier type mistakes.

Meed Ward wanted to do away with the strategic council that was recommended and wanted to cut back by much more than half the amount staff felt was needed for the legal help.

Politically it was getting awkward for the Mayor.  Publicly he had to always be seen as being very positive.  The difficulty was that he was being drawn into day to day problems which were certainly serious enough but these were not battles he should be fighting.  The Mayor needed to be seen as the General in all this, directing able troops.

The new alignment has the Mayor dealing with the top person on the hospital side, board chair Susan Busby

The hospital’s working team now has to align with Scott Stewart and the people with him as well as the legal talent that has been brought in.

A team consisting of  Scott Stewart, general manager community services, Joan Ford, acting executive director of finance and Cathy Robertson, Director Roads and Parks Maintenance.  This is the team that will handle the negotiations for the city.

And then came the announcement from the province that it had confirmed a contribution of $22.5 million to the re-development of JBMH.  While the city is pleased with that news, it doesn’t lessen the need to complete the due diligence process and get the details of the Contribution Agreement worked out.

The city has its negotiating team in place and the Mayor has asked the chair of the hospital board to have her people meet with the negotiating team as soon as possible.

Two additional steps were taken.  The Working Group was disbanded – which takes Councillors  Craven and Meed Ward out of that loop and gets the Mayor out of the middle of all this messiness.  The other decision was to un-delegate this file.  Traditionally city council makes decisions and hands the file over to staff to get the job done.  That is called delegating.

Un-delegating means that it now sits with Council to whom staff will provide regular updates, just the way they did with the Pier project.

Mayor Goldring summed up the city`s position very well when he said: . “As stewards of Burlington property taxpayer dollars, we want to ensure we are both transparent and accountable as we make that vision a reality.”

The city and the hospital have relied heavily on provincial cabinet member Ted McMeekin who operates to the west of Burlington in the constituency of  Ancaster – Dundas – Flamborough – Westdale.   While Burlington has an MPP she hasn’t bee very visible.

A set or Robo Calls Wednesday evening (Robo Calls are telephone calls made automatically to a list of telephone numbers which in this instance were to the homes of Burlington residents).  The calls, from an unidentified source advise the listener that the provincial government was funding the JBMH to the tune of $22.5 million but that Jane McKenna, the Burlington MPP,  was going to vote against the Liberal governments budget which would bring down the government, force an election and maybe cause delays in the re-development of the JBMH.  Listeners were told on a number of occasions during the call that all they had to do was press 3 on the telephone and they would get put directly through to Jane McKenna’s office.  When a listener pressed 3 the call was put through and Jane McKenna’s voice came on line.  Her office was closed – leave a message please. The calls put McKenna in an awkward position.  She does have options.

Who sponsored the Robo Calls?  Want to guess?

 

 

 

 

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON  March 28, 2012  Did you hear the one about the two cars driving west along the QEW?   You really don`t want the details but there were two vehicles that came back to civilization from the Big Smoke where they were locked up in a room with thick documents in front of them.

Burlington sent two of its brighter lights into the city to take part in that budget tradition of locking up a bunch of journalists in the same room where they could swap tales and then rush through the document and write up their stories.  In the days when Toronto had three daily newspapers each looked for an angle that was unique to its audience.

Today the “lockup” has more lobbyists in the room than actual journalists, each there to put a specific spin on the budget.

Having done that sort of thing with federal budgets I chose not to walk into the room but Mario Joanette, VP Communications for the Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital, and a political junkie if there ever was one, drove into town, snagged a good parking spot because he knows his way around the Legislature and settled in for a day with his chums.

Frank McKeown on the other hand had never been in a  “lock up”`so  for him it was a totally new experience.  It will be interesting to hear what he learned.

The news out of the budget was good for Burlington and its hospital hopes and good for the municipal sector overall.   Neither Joanette nor Mayor Goldring were totally surprised by the news.  Joanette says the hospital is on track and are close to having a “functional plan”  – should be done in a couple of weeks then it goes to the technical people and the architects.  “We are still on for the start of construction sometime in December, states Joanette.

Henry Decker is the Director at the hospital who will oversee the actual construction from the hospitals perspective..

Mayor Goldring is very pleased to see the announcement out there for everyone else to see.  Goldring has been in continued contact with people at Infrastructure Ontario, the people who will handle the construction of the hospital and handle the different tendering’s and bid selections.  He has had conversations with the Minister of Health and Long Term Care, Deb Matthews,  who was re-assuring in her conversations but she wasn’t the Minister of Finance – and that’s where the financial decisions were made.

The hospital has relied heavily on Ted McMeekin, the Minster of Agriculture in neighbouring Flamborough constituency.  McMeekin clearly did great stuff for Burlington but wasn’t able to save the Grimsby hospital.

With the doubt that was in the air now gone the mood in the city will get more positive.  Hospital Foundation Fund Raising Chairman Brian Torsney can now get out his telephone list and start making calls.  His Board can expect a breakfast meeting to be called real soon; they have some catching up to do.  The city of Burlington has $8.4 million of its $60 million share in the bank collecting interest.

Mayor Goldring expects the agreement between the hospital and the city to be completed “shortly”, which isn’t exactly a unit of measurement, and suggested that it could be up to eight weeks before the document gets to City Council.

While there were doubts, concerns and a lot of questions about the redevelopment of the hospital,  the budget read on Tuesday has put those to rest.  The Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital is going to be redeveloped – you won’t recognize the place when they are finished.  The only thing that can change the plans at this point is the government failing to get  its budget passed in the Legislature and the calling of an election.  How will Burlington’s MPP Jane McKenna vote on this budget – will she follow her political party or will she vote for the hospital re-development her constituents want so dearly,  and for which she campaigned for during the October election.  Politics is a funny business at times.

The hard hats for the ground breaking ceremony that could take place in December are on order.

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON  March 24, 2012  It would be nice to know that there has been a meeting that involved senior people at city hall and senior people at the hospital and ideally our provincial MPP,  where they attempted to set out what the options for the city  and its hospital are when the provincial budget is released on Tuesday.

The likelihood of Jane McKenna being at the table are slim – she has been left out of the loop having to do with the hospital.  Senior staff at Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital rely on Ancaster – Dundas – Flamborough – Westdale  MPP Ted McMeekin to speak for them and plead their case.

The provincial government commissioned a document that came to be known as the Drummond Report.  The purpose of the report was to tell the government where savings could be found and point to some possible directions for the government.  One decision was to sell the LCBO warehouse on the waterfront in Toronto but it went much deeper than small cosmetic changes. The report made it  very clear:  there had to be very deep and significant cuts in spending which were set out in the 346 recommendations made in the 945 page two volume report.

Premier Dalton McGuinty made it clear that he was not going to cut classroom sizes nor was he prepared to ease up on all day kindergarten plans.  He was prepared to ask teachers to get by without a pay raise for two years but that was as far as he was prepared to go with education cuts..

It was clear that infrastructure spending was going to be cut and that hospital construction was going to feel the impact.  Pre budget comments from anyone is more than a “mugs” game; budget leaks are a no, no and anyone who says they have spoken to someone “who knows” is spinning fog and deliberately misleading.

There have been reports that Mario Joanette, vice president communications knows for sure that the Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital re-development is not going to be included in the cuts.  Joanette just doesn’t know that for certain.   The only way he could know is if Treasurer Jim Flaherty whispered the words in his ear, and if that whispering took place on St. Patrick’s Day then it doesn’t count.  Joanette, like everyone else, will know what is going to happen by the end of the day on Tuesday, when the budget is read out in the provincial Legislature.

If the re-development of the hospital is the best thing for Burlington, then the project should proceed, if the government can afford it.  It is not my belief that re-developing Joseph Brant is the best thing for the community nor do I believe the government has the money to do the job.  My view is that at best, the JBMH project will get pushed back to 2017.

What responsible politicians and bureaucrats should be doing is gathering in a room and trying to set out just what the options are if the government moves a starting date back or, what the city does if they take this re-development right off the table.

The city is certainly doing its share to pay for the community portion of $120 million: $60 million from the Hospital Foundation and $60 million by the city.  Burlington has already set aside more than $4 million in a reserve fund that will get sent along to the hospital once there is an agreement in place as to just what the money is to actually be spent on.  At this point the Memorandum of Understanding is still unsigned.

What has become clearer recently for the public is that the “parking garage” is quite a bit more than a place to store cars.  It is going to be the location for the Family Medicine Practice that McMaster University has said they want to locate on the JBMH property.  McMaster has basically diddled the city on just about every project they have done with the city.

McMaster announced recently that their “preferred” location for the Family Medicine Practice was on the hospital property.  The agreement between McMaster University, the Region and Burlington had an Amendment that defined just what was meant by Health Care and where it was to be located – ”within the boundary of the mixed uses centre” of the city of Burlington.  The Health Care part is now known as the Family Medical Practice which we now know is going to be part of the parking garage that was talked about at all the city council meetings.  Along with the parking garage, the structure will include two floors of medical services space that is to be a minimum of 10,000 square feet and the offices of the Hospital Foundation.  The structure is reported to be seven storeys high.

Quite how one describes the JBMH complex as part of the downtown with a straight face is beyond me.  Ian Ross, Executive Director of the Burlington Art Centre, will tell you that he doesn’t see his buildings as part of the downtown core and the hospital is west of the Art Centre.  Those academics sure know how to twist language.

The first thing that has to happen is the creation of a common agenda.  Differences aside – we are all in this together – and we all rely on the provincial government to provide funding and right now our provincial government is close to broke.  The impact of the 2008 recession still lingers, to which has to be has added, the significant structural shift taking place in the Canadian economy.  Ontario, once the engine of the country’s economy, is now struggling as it transforms  itself out of the manufacturing sector into – well the province isn’t quite sure what it is going to transform into.  What it does believe it knows is that we are going to have to have a well-educated work force and thus the decision to pump money we do have into education.

That doesn’t relieve the leaders of Burlington from their responsibilities – and that is to figure out how we will deal with a decision that says “no provincial money” for Burlington for maybe as much as five years.

For something like this to work however, everyone has to come to the table and agree on a common agenda.  Right now we have McMaster still taking advantage of everyone.  Burlington is still paying McMaster the $10 million it agreed to pay if they located some of the facilities in the city.  The DeGroote School of Business did come to Burlington and there was at one point a sign on the Elizabeth Street parking lot announcing it was to be built at that location but, someone else with land to sell got in between the city and the University and the DeGroote School of Business is now out on the South Service Road..

Does Burlington hand over the $4.8 million it has in the bank and continue to pass along the $60 million they have committed tax payers to over the next six years?

The hospital foundation hasn’t exactly been issuing press release after press release telling us that they now have $20 million; now thirty million and getting close to forty five million in the bank.  Hospital CEO Eric Vanderwall boldly told Burlington city council that the hospital would match the city dollar for dollar in fund raising – don’t think they can do that today.  The people with the fat wallets seem to be sitting on them.  The one thing the public has seen is a two page full colour spread in a local newspaper with pictures of the fund raising committee.  We hope that space was a gift from the newspaper.

What does the city do if the government says: “Yes, but not right now – and we will tell you when.”  Well what can we do?  Tell the ambulance to head for Hamilton is one option.  The new Oakville hospital is under construction and the flow of funds to that site will not stop so that’s an option – as long as your need for serious surgery can wait that long.

Burlington Council member John Taylor thinks there is a better way to pay for the hospital and has asked that the city look into funding the $70 million city portion with some form of a bond that would be available to the public.

Right now when Burlington has to go to the public financial markets for funds, which we do every year, we tally up what we need and take that number to the Region.  Their treasurer adds up what each of the municipalities in the Region needs and then goes to the public markets and gets the best deal possible deal for the debenture they put on the market.  Municipal debt is seen as good risk.  The Region, as Chair Gary Carr will remind you, has a better credit rating than the United States of America.

Taylor’s view is that some of the debt the Region sells could be set up in such a way that it qualifies for inclusion in an RRSP for even an RESP.  While it takes a little more effort, the Region might have enough clout in the financial markets and be able to cut out some of the middle men in the game and keep the administration costs on these things lower than usual.  Are there enough people in Burlington, or the Region for that matter, to take up several hundred million so that Burlington could raise the money on its own and proceed with building the hospital with money  ‘invested’ by the community.   Taylor has enough people who think the idea has some merit and will be meeting with Regional people to see what’s possible.

The province doesn’t have the money but they do have a credit rating and we could – maybe – sell some of the bonds to the province and have them pay Burlington citizens back in 15 to 20 years when the bonds mature.  Regional debentures will certainly pay more than the miserable return the banks are giving these days and they are as solid as Canada Savings Bonds.

There are all kinds of possibilities but we have to get off our butts and do some of this thinking for ourselves because no one else is going to do it for us.

 

 

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON  January 4^th, 2012  –  There, that didn’t hurt now did it?  Remember those words from your first visit to the doctor?  It was a new experience for you and one you would get used to for the rest of your life.  A similar experience came across the desk of Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital CEO and President Eric Vandewall this week.  Ontario’s Freedom of Information legislation was made to apply to the medical community and JBMH had to post the information on its web site.  Now anyone and everyone can log in and see what the man is paid.  There is nothing exorbitant in Vandewall’s contract.  Some of his colleagues elsewhere in the province, particularly across the Bay, do much better.

To spare you the trouble of going through the 10 page agreement we can tell you that the hospital hired Vandewall in June of 2010 at a salary of $325,000 plus a car allowance of $1000. a month.  He has to pay for parking like everyone else, which is more than can be said of Burlington city council members, but then they don’t get the big bucks that Eric gets.

In December of this year Vandewall’s salary was increased to $338,428.  But there was a hook added to the compensation agreement.  $17,767. of that salary is “at risk”, meaning that it is possible for Vandewall to not to actually get the full $338,428. in his contract.   Has to earn this portion of his salary by meeting designated objectives outlined in the Hospitals’ Quality Improvement Plan.  Personally, I hope for Vandewall that one of the objectives isn’t his getting real money from the province to rebuild his hospital. I think the province is going to stiff him because it just isn’t going to have the money.

That level of detail in the contract “designated objectives” portion of the contract is something best left to the hospital Board.  You have to trust them to hold Vandewall accountable and to behave responsibly as a Board.  One small quibble – the information that was to be made public effective January 3^rd wasn’t actually available until sometime in the mid-afternoon – a small detail and hopefully not a telling one.

It is a new day for hospital administrators.  They are paid out of the public purse and are responsible to the public.  Accept the change or leave the profession and work in the United States where the dollars are much, much greater – but do you really want to live there?