By Pepper Parr
April 23, 2014
BURLINGTON, ON.
Mayor Rick Goldring announced today that Patrick Moyle, recently retired Chief Administrative Officer Halton Region, will be the city’s interim city manager effective May 1.
Current Burlington City Manager Jeff Fielding is leaving Burlington May 16 to become city manager in Calgary.
Amazing – these senior municipal civil servants do bed hop in a serious way. When Roman Martiuk parted ways with the city of Burlington, Council decided to have General Managers Kim Phillips and Scott Stewart share the job of acting city manager on a rotating basis. That worked just fine. When Jeff Fielding was hired and given a five year contract he and Scott Stewart worked exceptionally well together and most believed he would be tapped as the interim until a new city manager was hired.
Fielding’s leaving after just 26 months of a 60 month contract stunned many. His leaving has left a number of critical files without the kind of leadership needed – most critically the mediation of the pier dispute to take place in June.
Stewart has been doing double duty since last October when he got dropped into the Burlington Economic Development Corporation (BEDC) to oversee the operation of that organization while it went through a re-structuring.
Stewart has also been the lead on the Air Park issues and the efforts to get the Ontario Ministry of the Environment to release the results of the testing that has been done for problems related to possible contamination of the water table. Many people are thinking in terms of contamination of runoff water from what has been described as an “unlicensed landfill operation”.
Stewart, who wasn’t with the city when the tender for the second pier contract was issued, was the lead on the second effort to get the pier built.
In the city media release Mayor Rick Goldring said” “Under Jeff’s leadership, we have accomplished a tremendous amount of work in the last two years, setting us on the path for Burlington to become one of the most innovative and creative cities in Canada.,” “Putting Pat Moyle in place will give Burlington’s senior management team the resources they need continue to focus on significant initiatives and projects that are underway.”
The senior management team didn’t need any support during the six months it took to hire Fielding.
Patrick Moyle, former CAO of Halton Region will serve as interim city manager starting May 1
Moyle’s most recent appointment, after retiring from the Region, was as a Senior Advisor with Strategy Corp, where they make mention of his considerable public, private and not for profit experience,
He added: “A full, open search for Burlington’s city manager will begin later in 2014, and will include both internal and external candidates.” Can you imagine if the city said internal candidates would not be considered?
I suspect there is at least one candidate polishing a resume for any municipality looking for a strong leader who gets things done. Mayor Goldring brought out his favourite chestnut and said once again that as “Canada’s best mid-sized city, we can attract the best talent in municipal government.”
We thought that when we hired Fielding didn’t we? We seem to be able to hire them – why is it we can’t keep them?
How is this going to work? A retired civil servant taking a pension.
Double-dipping with no accountability. Great Gig; what’s Moyle supposed to do on an interim basis except maybe warm an empty seat for a while.
Retired civil servants should stay retired and leave any job openings to people who are actively working on a full time basis.
Fielding should not have left until the post was filled. That’s a moral obligation.
Who draws up these contracts?