By Pepper Parr
January 10th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
Included in the list of items that Council was going to discuss in a CLOSED session was the following:
Confidential verbal update regarding the city manager recruitment process
City Manager Tim Commisso – will end his current contract with the City on June 30th.
City Manager Tim Commisso advised Council last year that he was not going to seek a renewal of his contract and would leave the city on June 30th, 2024.
The decision surprised many, especially coming days after the city had awarded Commisso a $63,000 annual increase in salary.
Every City Manager brings a management approach that is theirs – they are the only person a City Council actually hires; everthing else is delegated to the City Manager who builds the staff and the administrative procedures he or she thinks best – all the while working within the policies Council has approved.
In my time covering City hall I have dealt with four men serving as City Manager. Each had their own operating style; two were dismissed and two left before their contracts were completed.
Burlington is currently experiencing significant changes on several levels. Council has committed to creating 29,000 new homes by 2031 – there are not very many shovels in the ground at this point.
Staff has grown, especially in the Planning and Information Technology departments where the demands for changes and improvements have created both tension and some disruption. Taxpayers are having difficulty with the tax increases. are
The provincial government has a Legislative Committee doing a review of the municipal structure for a number of Regions. Halton is one of them.
It has become clear that the province wants to see changes. Tim Commisso is in the tick of groups of municipal CAO’s who are trying to determine what should be done by a municipality and what should be done by a Region.
Planning is now a municipal responsibility which means that Burlington no longer has to comply is as closely is as it was required to do with Regional policies.
Tim Commisso, City Manager explaining the big picture.
Commisso would be very good at that kind of thing; the BIG picture is a comfort zone for him.
However, the new city manager might not bring the same skill sets and feel for devolving from a two tier organizational model to a single tier level of local government.
Our guess is that city council is talking to Commisso about a different contract – one that would have him being retained as a consultant to handle the evolution from the form of local government we have now to what will come out of the Legislative hearings.
On Thursday of this week Mayor Meed Ward will be delegating to the Legislative Committee on what Burlington would like to see happen to local government.
We don’t know that – but Council didn’t go into a CLOSED session to talk to Commisso about what kind of gold watch he will be given when he leaves city Hall on June 30th
It never ends !Gold plated pensions topped up by consultant contracts that pays double if not more!
Note CHCHTV Meed Ward interview today never breathed a word about the Mayor, Sharman and Nisan making presentations at this Committee tomorrow, despite receiving the same agenda we forwarded to the Gazette. A few weeks past, we asked Committee from the lectern to be more transparent with the public on their thoughts on the issues the Minister had passed on to a Committee Legislative Committee in terms of Halton (and its municipalities) governance. They took their usual course of action as did CHCHTV – no change from the silent path they were treading. We understand the meeting taking place at the Burlington Convention Centre beginning at 10 may be live streamed. Anne is scheduled to appear before Committee after recess at 1:00 p.m.
Anne will be addressing the need for a municipal accountability process accessible by the public the same as Alberta has along with a similar Recall Process for elected municipal officials that recently occurred in Alberta.
Multiple legislative audits the Marsdens have conducted relative to Halton and its municipalities governance, show simply having a legislative statement that the Region and City must be transparent and accountable does not do it! Decisions of Marin and Dube the last two Ontario Ombudsmen show a reptitition of municipalities breaking the rules, over and over and over again.