By Pepper Parr
January 3rd, 2022
BURLINGTON, ON
OPINION
A report from City Hall on how the Emergency Control Group was looking forward and beginning to think about when the State of Emergency could be lifted had a couple of bits of data that raised some questions.
The report mentioned that a “few” staff members described themselves as reacting from “suspected workplace transmissions”. Not quite sure what that means – but with a positivity rate of more than 40% in the overall provincial population and the Premier talking about hundreds of thousands of people flooding the hospital system and the folks at Joseph Brant saying don’t come to the hospital – self diagnose – that few (five people) doesn’t resonate all that positively.
We also asked if there were any members of Council, members of the Emergency Control Group and the Burlington Leadership Team had reported symptoms or gone into self isolation.
We were told that information wasn’t available due to privacy and confidentiality protocols.
That’s equivalent to what the ostrich does with its head.
City Manager Tim Commisso, above and Sheila Jones are the core strength of the administrative side at city hall. Were both to be ill at the same time – things would be difficult.
Were Tim Commisso, the City Manager and Sheila Jones the best Executive Director the city has to both be coping with the Omicron variant at the same time the city would be in close to dire straights.
There are a lot of people referred to as leaders – Burlington has precious few who bring to bear the experience, skill set and command know how that Jones and Commisso – with the exception perhaps of the Fire Chief.
Several of the other bright Executive lights at city hall know their jobs exceptionally well – Joan Ford leads at that level, but that doesn’t quite equate will tested, proven leadership.
A touch of transparency would go quite well about now.
Salt with Pepper is the musings, reflections and opinions of the publisher of the Burlington Gazette, an online newspaper that was formed in 2010 and is a member of the National Newsmedia Council.
