By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON. December 27, 2012 The eighth floor at city hall isn’t going to be quite the same when the building opens up after the Christmas holiday – which for city hall types went from December 21st to January 2nd – sweet.
The Mayor’s Chief of Staff is to be filled by Jackie Isada who replaces Frank McKeown who advised the Mayor last August that he was ready to move on. McKeown was one of a very small group of people who convinced Rick Goldring to run for the office of Mayor and then wrote much of the platform the Mayor ran on.
McKeown was fundamental to Goldring getting a grip on just how one serves as Mayor, especially when there was next to nothing in terms of co-operation between the outgoing Mayor and the new one. There was some advice given to Goldring by Jackson that Goldring saw as very damaging to the city. Goldring was not prepared to “blow-up” the pier.
Frank McKeown trying to make a point with Councillor Paul Sharman during the Strategic Plan sessions; the two seldom saw eye to eye on all that much.
With McKeown gone there is a gaping hole in the intellectual side of the office of Mayor – McKeown was the best thinker on the top floor of the building.
Ms Isada leaves the Economic Development Corporation where she headed up marketing and did a superb job. She has one of the friendliest dispositions in the city but municipal politics is more of a blood sport that focuses on attaining power and the wielding of that power. The learning curve for Ms Isada will be steep. Chief of Staff for a Mayor that faces a number of challenges during the balance of his term is not going to be a cake walk.
During the more than eleven half day meetings that went into the creation of the city’s Strategic Plan, McKeown participated fully – he got to be referred to as the seventh city Councillor, which didn’t go down all that well with a number of the very senior people at city hall. Other than the Georgina Black, the facilitator of the meetings McKeown was the smartest person in the room.
At basically every council and council committee meeting McKeown sat in the back row, observing what took place and meeting with the Mayor the next day to go over just what got done and what didn’t get done and reviewing the positions taken by other Council members and how staff had performed.
He was much more than the Mayor’s right hand man.
McKeown’s take on what impact and effect he had on the operation of the city is not all that positive. McKeown isn’t that talkative a person but he will tell people that his experience was such that he found few people within the civic administration were prepared to listen to new ideas. That “isolated” culture is one that McKeown found he wasn’t very effective in changing.
So, with two years of less than satisfying experience, Frank McKeown leaves the eight floor to send time on his other interests, at which he was very successful, and travel some with his wife who has retired.
Did Frank McKeown server the city well? Very, very well; he brought intellectual energy to the discussions that took place and got a neophyte Mayor through his first two years in office.
McKeown had the ability to focus on the real elements of a discussion and had little time or room for the emotions many politicians bring to the work they do. He understands all too well that the way municipalities are administrated is far from efficient and that because they don’t have to adhere to the market forces the private sector must deal with they can continue their merry way and raise taxes to cover their costs until the electorate figures out what is going on and votes them all out of office.
While one can get rid of the politicians – it is not possible to get rid of the bureaucrats – they are there for life. City Manager Jeff Fielding put it exceptionally well when he once said at a council committee meeting that “all we have to do is wait them out”. The remark was said more in jest, but the hard bald fact is that the politicians come and go while the bureaucrats spend their careers in the bowels of the building. They see no need to change and there is certainly no incentive to do so.
Late in January the Mayor will deliver his State of the City address. In the past it was possible to see the hand of Frank McKeown all over the document. Many will watch for the differences in the 2013 speech.
This occasion may well be the opportunity the Mayors takes to deliver the results of his “One Dream” for the city. McKeown didn’t have much to do with that misguided effort.
McKeown will go back to what he was very successful at – creating new business opportunities and new wealth. The city lost a good one.
During his first year in office the Mayor didn’t go very far without Frank McKeown at his side. Here, during a budget preparation meeting McKeown, to the Mayor’s left, meets with finance department staff to go over some of the numbers. Budgets were something McKeown would treat as vital and something he fully understood. You did not want to get Frank McKeown going on the city’s finances and a balance sheet.
McKeown has said that public office is not out of the question for him and Jack Dennison’s Ward 4 has attracted him in the past. McKeown is a good fit for the ward but his personality and his skill set are much more suited to the world of entrepreneurship where new ideas meet with risk and reward – something that just isn’t part of Burlington’s city hall.
There may come a time however, when Goldring needs someone to write a report with recommendations on which he can base decisions. Should that happen – Frank McKeown is his man.
Former Mayor Cam Jackson turned to the late John Boich and another former Mayor Walter Mulkewich to write the Shape Burlington report in 2010. That report is still reverberating around city hall.
Frank McKeown should be appointed to the Economic Development Corporation as well as Burlington Hydro. Were our Mayor wise enough to commission McKeown to write a business plan on how best to develop the economy of the city and to deploy the resources we have McKeown would do the job for $1. And the city would be very well served.
Hopefully we have not seen the last of Frank McKeown at city hall.
Going to miss my book buddy!!!!!
All the best to you Frank.