Wow. Considering what is going on behind closed doors at city hall it is really no surprise at all council has eliminated the city’s communications department.

I know Lori had been there for many years. I wonder if she also “retired”. I think she was in a union position so I can’t imagine that she was fired but who knows. Interesting.

Anyone know were Chris Bone and Scott Bone related?

married

What does the communication dept. do? They don’t have anything to do with communication that I can tell.

If this is Beth James doing, good for her. Time to cut the fat at City Hall… and there is a lot of it…

Some changes at the top were all but guaranteed when Beth James was brought in as new city manager.

When some people are on a job for many years they can become more concerned at protecting their little fiefdoms than running their departments in the most effective and effective manner. From what I have seen it have been a number of years since city hall has been running on all cylinders.

As Ms. James was brought in to give the place a tune up or a major overhaul having a communications department that can actually get the message out would seem to be a logical first step. So I do not agree with you trueblue2, this is not a step taken by council but by the top manager who is managing.

Interesting that they blow away the communications department while according to their website they are in the interviewing stage for a communications director – wonder who that person is going to direct……

Great comment JohnnyBelt till the income disappears from your family. Sometimes social concience needs to prevail. I am sure these people and others who work for the City do have families and children. Its kind of like If taking all the oil out of an economic engine, it won’t be long before it quits. There is a much larger picture to start looking at here.

This is the City Manager’s doing for sure.

This is not Council’s decision to make. They hired a City Manager and the City Manager has to be allowed to do her job. If she finds areas where people cannot change to a new paradigm, they have to be considered for re-trained or let go. There is no other way.

Top positions in any organization are the most vulnerable.

It is very obvious that City Hall needs a lot of house cleaning, and it needs to start with some top level people. Cannot change from the bottom up.

Hopefully they can find some people who have demonstrated competence to replace the job functions which have to carry on and who have not reached their level of incompetence.

The people involved may be nice people, but that cannot influence a decision to promote or demote or to lay a person of.

“Wow, its getting harder and harder to stomach this site.”

And why would that be? Your friend just got laid off?

The indicators that the City Administration needed a look at it from an outsider have been there for at least a decade, if not longer. Derek Bates was not able to do it. Perhaps he was too close to the community.

Who knows, Beth James may have been hired to do this exact thing. If so, once the house is back with a well oiled team, she may leave to go on with similar work elsewhere. Some people make this a career.

As some say, only time will tell.

Will she bring the City administration back to a workplace in which people will like to go to work and in which people will flourish? If so, that is a skill which is very much sought after in the corporate world.

Raresense, your sentiments are appreciated and understood. It is those sentiments which sometimes mean, for example, that a person who has been hired to do a project with a fixed term is given the opportunity to step into another position which really had a requirement for a different skill set. That happens all too often in some workplace environments due to personal relations rather than business relations.

The City is a workplace environment.

I doubt that anyone who is competent in doing their job gets laid off if the functions they were responsible for are still required in the organization.

She was hired to do exactly this thing gus. Beth James use to work for PricewaterhouseCoopers who had a huge contract with the Provincial Government to improve government systems and administration management.

One initiative she was overseeing was the use of “shared platform” in various government services like health care, where accounting, administration and IT services could be shared by a number of health authorities to save money and achieve efficiencies.

The share platforms initiative she was involved in failed miserably. Here is an article about some of her work, if you scroll to the last of four pages there is a picture of her on the left hand side of the article.

http://www.pwc.com/en_CA/ca/public-sector-government/publications/new-government-services-model-2011-04-en.pdf

Cheers!

trueblue2 … the city’s communications department was not communicating.

For one, this city’s web site remains a substandard city web site. Scott Bone had a lot to do with that when a call went out for an RFP many moons ago and a number of companies told him that the requirements put forth in the RFP could not be met.

I do not know who made the recommendation to go with KPMG, when they were the sole bidder. However, it was the responsibility of the purchase manager to manage such processes and make sure that the expectations could be accomplished for the price guidelines and that there were enough companies bidding on the proposal. If not, then one needs to look at the RFP details (which means finding someone who understands the realities of the project who can provide advice in writing the RFP) and find out from potential bidders what roadblocks there might be to putting in a bid.

Incidentally, what the Liberal Government has been keeping under wraps is how spectacularly their “new government services model” crashed and burned.

It cost us tax payers a few million, but what the hey… hey?

People#1 …. it seems to me that you have not yet learned that there are few if any certainties in life and in business.

Government is a very large business. It is just not typically called that. There are successes and there are failures. We learn from both, at least some of us do.

The key question is, can a person learn from successes and failures. In other words, does the person have an objective, open mind? If not, then they are not the right person in an organization which has to change with the social, economic and environmental world it does business in.

The whole concept of shared services and shared service platforms has been tried before in other countries public services and within the Federal Government public service.

After all, the whole idea of “centralized service” has proven to be more costly, not less costly, and less efficient, not more efficient.

Yet despite numerous examples of these failures we have a Federal and Provincial government embarking on the implementation of a shared services model with the same predictable end result; namely failure.

This frequently happens when decisions are made based on an ideology that centralized service is the be all and end all for cost effectiveness and efficiency… a Conservative ideology no doubt!

By the way, you of course know who John Galt is don’t you?

Besides, we all know a shared services delivery model is a method used to “outsource” government jobs and reduce the size of government service but not it’s costs.

Atlas Shrugged is required reading for Architecture students. ;-)

What you think “we all know” and what we actually all know are two different things.

“The whole concept of shared services and shared service platforms has been tried before in other countries”

You mean shared platforms like the internet?

Totally useless!!!!!!!

LOL

Sorry, People#1, you are far too restrictive for my type of thinking.

You are like a horse with blinders on to reduce the likelihood of spooking.

Just look at you take off in all directions even with those blinders of yours on. ;-)

To be more concise BCRacer

not everyone thinks :)

Well as the Opinion 250 news article states; “The City has been looking for a new Communications Director. The job description indicated the successful candidate would be responsible for two staff members. As of tonight, there is no communications department to “direct”.”

With no personnel in the communications department, it would seem to be a good opportunity to bring in a communications business or firm (outsource) for city communication services.

Time will tell, I suppose. Don’t get me wrong… I really hope that this will not be the case, as I would rather see hired rather than contracted communication services.

When you hire professional individuals, there should be that sense of obligation to provide quality service to their employer (us the tax payer). When those services are contracted to business, that business is those professional individual’s employer, and other “business” matters of concern may interfere with the provision of quality service like; that business’s profit margin for example.

So I am crossing my fingers that they “hire” communication professionals at the city and not outsource the entire city communications department to a business, or firm, via a request for proposals / expression of interest, or similar process.

Posted by: raresense on October 22 2013 10:48 PM
Great comment JohnnyBelt till the income disappears from your family. Sometimes social concience needs to prevail. I am sure these people and others who work for the City do have families and children. Its kind of like If taking all the oil out of an economic engine, it won’t be long before it quits. There is a much larger picture to start looking at here.

—————–

This sense of entitlement pretty much sums up all that is wrong with our society today. No one deserves to be kept on the payroll just because they have a family. Reality can be pretty harsh.

Seems to me the husband retired and the wife followed him as he left for sunnier climate.

Glad to see changes at PG Purchasing. Never felt that I was dealt with fairly there as a supplier.

PG guy, I think Scott was very concise with policy and consistent, I dealt with the city an Scott, and felt he always was fair and honest.

As Gus always states *Governments are another form of business** . Keeping this in mind then getting rid of the top dogs, when a new regime comes in, is standard practice.

Lets looks at what has happened so far.

1. Derek Bates gone.
2. McEwen from IPG gone.
3. Purchasing Manager gone.
4. Communication Manager gone.

There will be more to come, as the Mayor and the City Manager build their **new team**

However **The best laid plans of mice and men oft times go awry**

We may end up with a new **Team** however the fruits of these efforts may very well be enjoyed by a **New Mayor**.

In addition the **New Mayor** may be looking for a **New Manager**

Roll dem bones.

PAT BELL FOR MAYOR!!!!!

Mrs Green taking out he inability to manage projects on her staff again.

“The City does not comment on personnel matters.”

Hard to comment or issue a press release when the communication department is a ghost town.