By Pepper Parr
January 5th, 2023
BURLINGTON, ON
OPINION
City Manager Tim Commisso, originally the Mayor’s choice as City Manager; he decided not to renew his contract.
The City Manager has announced he will not be renewing his contract.
The head of Human Resources and the City Solicitor have both retired.
The City Treasurer has announced that the budget put in place recently is the last one she will do.
The City Clerk and the Director of Communications are no longer with us.
Council is understood to be interviewing or reviewing resumes as they search for a new City Manager.
All this certainly doesn’t reek of confidence.
There are some top notch people in place on the administrative side: Shelia Jones, Executive Director and Chad McDonald who heads up the technical and IT side of the business are as good as it gets.
Alison Enns
Emilie Cote
Bryn Neally
There are a number of young women in place at City Hall doing very good work: Alison Enns, Bryn Neally, and Emilie Cote – the City is lucky to have them.
As good as these people are they need leadership and at this point that leadership is not coming from the City Manager or City Council elected in 2022.
Very hard to have a strong sense of confidence as Council returns to the Council Chamber on Monday to carry out the business of the City with a Mayor in the Chair operating under the Strong Mayor powers given last July running what has become a one person show.
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.
‘Salesforce 311’ is taking over the ‘citizen experience’ in local and Federal governments they also create ‘connected cities’ meaning no more time wasting coming up with solutions that other cities and Countries have already solved or are solving, no more duplication between Municipal, Regional, Provincial Federal governments. It had to happen eventually, we pay ever increasing taxation for ever decreasing services. My thinking, just farm the whole thing out and be done with it.
Claiming that these people are “top notch” is a bit presumptuous. They may have potential, but potential doesn’t necessarily translate into on-the-job performance. The test of efficacy is whether these people can deliver clear and measurable results consistently over an extended timeframe. I submit the jury is still out.
The number of senior resignations/leaves/terminations at City Hall in such a short period of time is indicative of an organization under stress and in chaos. You can bring in a whole slate or new people, but unless they are properly onboarded, have a clear mandate and understanding of their role, and fully comprehend the criteria by which they will be evaluated, then it amounts to putting decorations on a Christmas tree with no regard to whether symmetry, design, colour, lighting, etc.
What is needed at City Hall isn’t more immediate, ad hoc hiring to fill vacancies. What is required is a full organizational review to determine the best operating structure to meet community needs. It’s called “strategic planning”, and strategy is something that is seriously lacking at City Hall for quite some time.
While we find out Clerk is gone we have not been told how his responsibilities have been divided up. That is a huge oversight especially with the knowledge that the Clerk is the subject of several complaints, by different persons related to his responsibilities.
We do not want Deputy Clerks carrying on where he left off, particularly with calling of Special Council Meetings. The information we were given by a Deputy Clerk is the Clerk has been petitioning the Council rather than is required by legislation, a Council majority complete a petition for a Special Council meeting and until the Clerk receives such, a Special Council Meeting cannot be held unless a resolution to hold was voted on at a previous Regular Council meeting but not as part of the Calendar
We asked for the petition associated with a recent Special Council meeting and was told there is not one as the Clerk emailed individual councillors to find out their availability.
If a Special Council meeting is not called as per legislation the decisions made are without authority. We have enough examples of such occurring, we do not need more. We need assurance from the City Manager that the Deputy Clerks are not now taking the lead from how Arjoon operated outside the legislation and more on the will of Council. I.e. Consent Agenda items must be transferred to Regular agenda if a delegation is speaking to the item. Further there must be a quorum present (50% of members plus one). That was not the case for an Audit Committee Chaired by Kearns and it went ahead anyway.
The Senior staff waited far too long to deal with Clerk issues and it is going to take a long time to sort out the mess caused by the delay. Public records disappearing from the City Calendar since before the 2018 election that are claimed to be there is just one example.