By Pepper Parr
March 23, 2015
BURLINGTON, ON
James Ridge may have arrived at city hall at least an hour before most staff people show up for work. A large part of his background was in the armed forces – military police – and those guys show up early.
Ridge will work on the sixth floor where the one General Manger we have on staff works. In the past City managers have worked on the eighth floor just across the hall from the Mayor’s office. Jeff Fielding, the most recent full time city manager we had, started out on the eight floor but moved to the sixth floor to be, as he put, “in the trenches with the troops”.
Ridge is starting on the six floor – he will want to be close to the team he is going to have to build.
Newly minted city manager James Ridge takes the helm on a nice sunny day. Maybe he brought the weather with him from Vancouver.
James Ridge comes to Burlington from Vancouver where the hockey team was not an ongoing embarrassment that has announced it will need the next five years to build a team that at least has prospects.
Ridge doesn’t have five years to build his team – and right now he really doesn’t have the bench strength he is going to need to get a team together that can take Burlington to where it can go – all we need is a vision, leadership and above average administration – people who can execute on the plan they are given.
The corporate structure might undergo a change in the hands of James Ridge – but at this point in time we have a single General manager and eight Directors and two Executive Directors
Of the directors:
Mike Spicer – Director of Transit
Cathy Robertson – Director Roads and Parks Maintenance
Nancy Shea Nicol – Director of Legal Services and city solicitor.
Joan Ford – Director of Finance
Bruce Zvaniga – Director of Transportation
Chris Glenn – Director Parks and Recreation
Sheila Jones – City Auditor
Christine Swenor – Director of Information |Technology Services
Bruce Krushelnicki – Director Planning and Building – his retirement has been announced.
Alan Magi – Capital Works and Roy Male Human Resources, serve as Executive Directors.
The consensus seems to be that none of the Director level staff are ready for promotion to general manager – which means Ridge will have to look outside the corporation for the talent he needs.
His first task is going to be to interview all the senior staff as well as the members of council and get a sense of what he has to work with and what they key issues are.
Fortunately – there is enough money in the bank to pay the bills and Ridge will have a Director or Finance who will keep him up to date on how the spending and tax collection is doing.
Expect Ridge to be slightly stunned when he realizes just how many Master Plans there are floating around out there and how far behind the city is with the upkeep of its infrastructure.
Will he become part of the conspiracy to hoodwink the tax payers when the special tax levy put in place to raise the $60 million the province said we had to come up with to pay for the hospital re-build continues to be collected after the $60 million has been raised?
The special tax levy to pay for the re-development of the hospital will end once we have raised the $60 million. Will the new city manager insist that the public have some say as to whether or not the levy stays in place and gets used for infrastructure repairs?
The financed people have already earmarked those dollars for infrastructure work that we are millions of dollars behind on.
Or will James Ridge prove to be the kind of civic administrator who demands that the public be informed and involved in critical decisions. Only time will tell.
One of the more pressing issues is going to be the Air Park and the problem with getting them to submit a site plan for work that has already been done – or face some serious consequences.
Ian Blue, the lawyer the city hired to fight the two court cases over whether the city had the right to require the Air ark to submit a site plan – Blue won in both instances – is back on the payroll which means something is in the works.
The Air Park and its failure to deliver a site plan to the city is a major issue – it will be interesting to see if city manager James Ridge gets along with Ian Blue, the lawyer who won two court cases for the city, as well as former city manager Jeff Fielding did.
The Air Park is reported to have hired a new lawyer. Having a good lawyer is always useful – having a good case would be better.
A city manager sets the tone for the administration of a city. His corporate values are the driving force.
Jeff Fielding goosed the enthusiasm at city hall to levels it had not seen in some time. Staff were excited; great things were going to get done – and some good things were done.
Some staff were not all that keen on the Fielding approach and his sudden departure hurt a number of staff. It also brought to the surface a number of problems that could come back to take a bite out of the city.
Joe Lamb, on the left, did the negotiating for the Seniors’ Centre and basically took then city manager Jeff Fielding to the cleaners with the deal he talked the city into. Will James Ridge get pulled into the same trap?
The Seniors at the Seniors’ Centre are hoping that Ridge will be as generous as Fielding was – he gave them more than the proverbial kitchen sink.
James Ridge has walked into a city where people at city hall are not that keen on getting excited again. He has some sales work to do. Let’s see what he gets done in the next month.
Fielding wanted his senior people out on the street once a month for part of a day meeting people, telling the city’s story and listening. That idea apparently didn’t go down all that well with senior staff.
What will Ridge do to show the direction he will take and what kind of an administrator he is?
Certainly not the best photo op he’s done – Mayor Goldring’s selfie – the one he sent the day he took the bus to work.
Perhaps he will take the bus to work – if he happens to live in the same part of town as the Mayor they can sit beside each other and take selfies of themselves.
