Transparency at City Hall?
We elect a Mayor and City Council in Prince George to govern on behalf of the taxpayers, and yet more and more, that governance is being removed and more and more the business of government is being conducted behind closed doors by what appears from the surface to be a select few.
Case in point, the terminating of 11 workers from city hall last week. Contacting the majority of council members was pointless because they were left in the dark as much as the average citizen.
If the pledge by Council and the Mayor in the past election to be more transparent meant anything, then they would have carried on that practice. You may recall that early into the mandate of the new Mayor and Council in early 2012, the Mayor, surrounded by most of Council and senior administration announced that nine people had been terminated. You may also recall the mayor pointing to the salary of Tim McEwen, former head of IPG, saying he was double dipping for taking a job with the province while receiving a buy out from the city. His salary became a topic of discussion. Who told the media what that salary was?
Last week we were told by Todd Corrigall, Manager of Communications at City Hall that this is an HR matter and that isn’t discussed in public.
So which is it? When did this new policy come into effect, because it doesn’t fall into line with that “open and transparent” pitch we were given .
Councillor Brian Skakun said he didn’t know about the cuts, and wasn’t told. Councillor Frank Everitt nearly fell off his chair when 250News advised him of the job losses. The deed had been done but who called the shots?
Taxpayers should know the value of severance packages, and which people have departed.
What are we paying the new Manager of Communications, a $100,000 a year and benefits? What is his assistant Mike Kellett receiving? What are they there for, to ensure that only the news that the hierarchy at city hall wants out, gets out?
It doesn’t take long to add up a million dollars that the taxpayers are being asked to fund. We do know that Marco Fornari, was given a package that paid him a couple of years salary. Fornari hasn’t been on the job since the end of 2011, but in 2012 and 2013 was paid a total of $220,659.89. When Fire Chief John Lane resigned in August of 2013, his full salary for that year was $182,778.58. That’s about $35 thousand dollars more than he made for working the full year in 2012.
We haven’t yet been able to see what Scott Bone received, or his wife Chris Bone, there is also Lori Tisbury, Glen Stanker, Colleen Van Mook, John Lane and what about the three from the City’s public works department? What did they receive in the form of a package and under what circumstances, were they blamed for the City’s poor snow removal last winter?
There is well over a million dollars on the table for those packages.
We have an employment contract with Beth James, City Manager which is rumoured to have a severance guarantee of in excess of $400,000 dollars attached to it, should she be forced out of her post. Who negotiated that type of contract and why might also be a reasonable follow up question.
If you received a request for $500.00 dollars in the mail, would you simply mail out the check without knowing what that money will be used for? So let me ask this, just where is that money you recently paid in taxes going? Oh, you don’t know… pity .
I’m Meisner, and that’s one man’s opinion.
Comments
Can someone enlighten me, on what city business there is that shouldn’t be shared with the taxpayers? If there is some, what reasons would they have for keeping it under wraps?
Why is it, that the taxpayers are kept in the dark? I really don’t understand this at all.
We, the employers in this situation, are coming to the point where we will insist that we will elect a “communications manager” who will disclose any and all city business.
We really need to get together and get recall legislation instituted.
every time I hear the phrase “transparency”
all I can think is that if the city is transparent then when we look in we see right through to the other side because they are hiding everything they do..
while they want us to think they are being open for us to see what they are doing … yeah right!
as far as I am concerned, not just city, but any organization that uses “transparency” is hiding what they are doing from the public, and things are not as much on the up and up as they would have us believe.
In times past they used to have a moat and a drawbridge to keep the peasants out.
Now it is silence and fuzzification that achieve the same results. And it is practiced at all three levels of government, with much efficiency.
The Manager of Communications has an assistant? Wow!
Wow nice severance packages. Sign me up.
Beth is running the show behind the scenes. Mayor green will be gone soon but her stinky legacy will be around for a while.
There is no doubt that access to administration, and managers, was a lot easier under the laid back Mayor Rodgers.
Mayor Green and her closest cohorts at City Hall make so many bad decisions, that they needed someone like Beth James to do damage control on a regular basis. Her job is essentially to get rid people who do not conform to the Mayors plan, which to some degree is needed, however they have gone way overboard.
Beth James is not referred to as **Stonewall James** for no reason.
With Mayor Green leaving and with the possibility of some of the Councillors who supported her through thick and thin (mostly thick) not being re-elected we have a chance to turn this situation around.
We need to see how many people were let go, what the severance amount was, and how many were replaced. Then we need to see if we have a net loss, and just how much this change at City Hall has cost us. Then determine if the cost was worth the effort.
I think there are a number of other people at City Hall that have been effectively replaced by Associate Directors, and are basically waiting for a buy out, or for their pensions. If so, how much is this costing us.??
In addition to transparency at City Hall, we need the news media to do more investigative reporting, and to ask the hard questions.
It is the media that can shine the light into the black hole of City Hall.
Keep up the good work Ben.
Well said Palopu! And if I may add that at 10am this morning as Stolz announces his re-election campaign, it will truly be the death of accountability within our civic government…
Stoltz will have to be re elected the same as all the others. I sincerely doubt that he has anywhere near the support he had the last few elections.
How many of these managers have assistants? I seem to recall there was a lot of buzz about the city planning to get at least one more additional Communications Managers! How many does the city have now? Do they all have an assistant as well?
The mayor set the tone when she hired a person to assist her, apparently becoming the first mayor in PG history who hired a personal assistant.
Recall sounds good but there is no legislation to allow that yet.
The contract that Beth James signed would not be unusual for a position of this type. It was most likely a 5 year contract with a 18 month severance package to buy the contract out.
As city manager it is her job to hold people accountable and if a few feathers get ruffeled or a feeling gets hurt in the process so be it, long past due IMO. If anything she has not done enough and is beginning to get stuck in the quagmire of city hall bs. There is more dead wood that needs to be managed by a boot to the backside or a Friday afternoon exit, the one problem being is that some of these people have been there a long time and will be expensive to uproot.
I see the Missing Poppa post concerning the city manager has vanished making my reply seem a little off topic-oh well.
I can’t see why we can’t root out the dead wood and clean out city hall through contract renewals rather than through severance packages. Make them work their full terms… even Bill Gail. We can side line the dead wood without laying them off and still save money bringing in new blood.
If I run for mayor I think it would be essential to lay down the gauntlet with all salaried employees who have had the run of the place for far to long. I would call for a 40% cut to all salaries on contract renewal for any income over the $80,000 maximum threshold… including the mayors salary, which would cut the councilors salary by about 10% as that is tied to the mayors salary. Mayor and council will have to step up to the plate if they want meaningful change at city hall.
PG is not Vancouver or Kelowna and I doubt they would pay the rates PG pays per capita. We have many who have the skills, that can be sourced from our local economy, that could easily replace any positions at city hall under the new rates.
Don’t discriminate… it happens to unions and in industry all the time. Give them notice when their contracts expire that they will be signing, as a matter of municipal bylaw, for the new reduced rates. If they wish to be considered for their current position then they will have to sign the new contract one year prior to its expiration with potential severance tied to a week per year worked in their current position. If they can’t sign the new contract than they can train their replacement or quit without severance. Remove the silos and flatten the structure of city hall and we can make it easier to do this again in the future.
All candidates should be candid that only so much can be done about employment expenses. Most is tied up in union contracts for at least the first half of the next term. Reductions in costs will come at the top end where it is needed most, and this will likely be a process that will run the length of the next council term.
I also think what is needed is a four year rate freeze on the residential taxes to focus the councils attention (including canceling the new rainwater runoff tax). Most all the residential rate increases have come as a result of the tax transfer from major industry and light industry (the political monied interests) to the residential rate payer. Let the monied interests that funded the campaigns that brought us the rising residential rates absorb the budget deficits at city hall for the next couple of years… and then maybe they will be more responsible about city hall in the future.
IMHO
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