wow! I am in the wrong line of work....

Disgraceful. The least a person can do is put in some time to earn their money.

The photo caption should be "Two happy campers--not!"

It is an *amicable* ending indeed! I am not surprised that the gentleman accepted it...how lucky can one get without even buying a lottery ticket? Very lucky!

Who pays for this ultimately? Will the next president be hired under similar conditions?

no
no
yes
yes

"The search for an interim President gets underway immediately, and Dr. Rix says he has an appointment on Monday in Vancouver with a potential candidate."

Why not try to hire someone that's FROM Prince George. Maybe someone who's lived here a long time so they already know the area and how brutal our winters can be, so they won't run off when it gets cold henceforth costing us more money? But then again, what the hell do I know.

I think I'll run for city council. I'd fit in well.

Nobody I know is qualified or interested in the huge responsibility of running this university. Don't get hung up on the compensation package. It's not such a big deal, considering the type of people we are looking for. (Were not talking about a Managerial position at a local Pizza Hut)

Most people can't relate to the compensation packages, but this is the reality of the position. I support and encourage adequate pay for the position and the responsibilities that go along with it. (Pay peanuts, get monkeys)

Too bad it didn't work out for everyone involved. But, that happens sometimes. I wish Mr. Cozzetto the best and I wish to thank him for coming to PG. Chester

Gary, your in we need you at City Council. There should at least be four or five vacancies come November.

Cheers

Well shouldnt the public have the right to hear why he was let go? Just asking.

SPEECHLESS......

This is nothing compared to what corporate Presidents get when they leave with "mutual agreement."

Remember, the contracts are mutually agreed to at the beginning. Whoever is in the postion of president has to be assured that he/she will be supported in that postion and whate the environmental conditions of work are. At the same time, the president has to be able to do the job. If not, they have to be evaluated as such and shown the door with a minimal severance package, but still a severance package.

One year's salary is quite reasoanable for such a position. Chit happens, and one really cannot put a finger on whose fault it was quite often - his, the board's or the government. These things are a trial, and some will work, others will not. It is a risk one takes on both sides of the agreement.

I doubt the weather had a major impact.

BTW, the annual salary is not that much more than a medical health officer which has much less reponsibilities associated with it, in my opinion.

Maybe Opinion 250 can publish some of the higher salaries paid to individuals in the public sector in this area so that people can get a bit more upset or used to the figures.....

Great to know my tuition is going to pay people for not doing anything...

The question is not the severance package, or the pay, even though they are excessive for a University of this size.

The question is why did he leave????
Could he see down the road that this so called University is in serious trouble. Most of the Ostriches in this town think its doing fine but it isnt, mainly because we will begin to run out of students in the next few years and the University will go the way of the Prince George College, which sits empty in the middle of a shopping mall. I was here when we got all the hype for the PG College much of it was the same as we got for the University.

Chester: I agree if you pay peanuts you get monkeys, however the other side of the story is if you pay bananas you get apes.
I think we have a large number of apes wandering around this town.

One of the largest crocks of FN BS I have seen come down the pipe in some time.
Bottom line is he quit and gets a FN golden handshake, FN horse doodoo.
Who ever ok's this type of thing should lose their job.
Tuition increase next term I hear.

I agree with lostfaith.

The term actually is to come down the pike. Back in Roman times the roads were built with pike ;poles, hence the term down the pike or in modern times down the road.

OWL the guy quit his job and is moraly not entitled to Squat. Say what you want to defend this, but you are very misguided in your thinking.

No one that quits their job should get any type of severance, ESPECIALLY when it involves taxpayers dollars.

We as taxpayers should demand this type of BS never happens again.

OK you say pike I say pipe, LOL.

not doing anything??????

I think "they" have been, except that they have not been able to pull it off .....

There is the day to day operation ... which has continued ....

Then there is the strategic planning of where you want to be 5 and 10 years from now ..... What that is, and how to get there ......

For those who wish to see what the published view of a 3 year administrative re-alignment is of that from the UNBC, it can be seen here:

http://www.unbc.ca/embracingchange/academic_visioning.html

They are proposing to restructure from 2 colleges to 7 faculties .....

Go to the powerpoint at
http://www.unbc.ca/assets/embracingchange/aawg_draft_recommendations_revised.pdf

On the last 2 slides we can read the key points.

1. Will a faculty system serve students and faculty any better than a College and Program System?

WOW!! we have gotten this far and still do not have the answer to this when it is to be implemented in the next 2 years. And these people teach organization management at the degree level????????

7. What are the one-tme and ongoing costs associated with adopting these recommendations?

Cozzetto inherited this quagmire proposal. It received Board approval at the June 2006 meeting while Jago was still the President and Cozzetto attended as the President elect .....

Those who caused it are the ones who quit before - Japo, Poff, Blouw .. remember, they all left too ... only we do not know with how many $$$$$

Where the Board of Governors really fits in to all this only those in the inner circle know and those attached to that circle ....

But hey ... McLean's keeps on giving UNBC great reviews, so students will keep coming. Despite the behind the scenes stuff, other measurements are great.

"No one that quits their job should get any type of severance"

Then make sure you negotiate the next contract for UNBC ....

good luck, by the way!!!

:-)

Owl, your responses to this outrageous story indicates you have some type of connection to the university and would also benefit from these immoral handouts if you were to QUIT your job. Didn't your mommy teach you that quitters are losers and no benefits come to them?
Or was your mommy in the same type of position as yourself?

I'm disgusted. #$@%% disgusted. And the university needs to balance their books?
Maybe I know nothing about this sort of thing but... it offends on numerous levels, and thats all I need to know sometimes.

Perhaps the guy standing to the left in the above picture is you.

Half a mil? Wow! Do I feel foolish buying lottery tickets now? You betcha!! I thought people say, "Quitters never win!" Now they do. Cool, eh?

Not that it makes a difference, but didn't Opinion250's first artice on this say that because he quit there would be no severance? Was that just an assumption by the reporter?

As for the payout, shameful. This is an embarrassment to UNBC.

Awesome! And other work places want to give a pay reduction. $500,000.00 what a frigin joke.

The same people who think that it is just fine that a person gets a half a million bucks for NOT fulfilling a contract would scream like mad if any of the money had to come out of their own pocket! I repeat: Out of their own pocket!

How easy it is to spend money that is not one's own and to be nonchalant and flippant about it by comparing one absurd compensation package to other packages that are even more extravagant and insulting to anyone who has to get up in the morning to work a whole year at a hard job - only to make LESS than what one of those rip-off artists collects for one day or one week of a so-called platinum handshake!

We all should give our heads a real good shake and start squawking and objecting as loudly as we possibly can to put and end to such blatant abuse.

That's my opinion.

Wow! Pretty well has all been said.

However, I would like Dr. Cozzetto to stick around and try to manage the local pizza shop as mentioned above. Hey, what the heck the guy doesn't have a job and this should be a good filler and he can hone up his skill for the next big windfall that comes his way.

By the way, how much do pizza shop mangers make? 2 or 3 hundred grand a year? Plus severance of course.

lostfaith ....

sorry ... none of those .... I simply know what some of the contracts for CEOs look like .... and that it is not primarily a public sector concern but a private sector concern ..... public sector CEOs typically do not make compensations in the millions, private sector ones do .....

and if the costs seem high in both cases, don't forget that the customer, whether public or private, always pays .... either through the cost of the product or tax ....

So, you're stuck ......

As I said, you negotiate the next contractr and see how many people you will attract to the position and keep if you do not offer such a contract .....

There is nothing wrong with your opinion .... you are allowed to have it as much as I am allowed to have it .... it is just that I am telling you the way that it is, it is not merely an opinion .....

This fellow "resigned" ... i.e. "quit or was asked to leave" with 3 years left to go in a contract.

http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2002/03/25/daily46.html

$5.7 million in 2002 .....

We do not know whether Cozzetto quit or was asked to resign, do we? The typical terminilogy is "resignation". Suddenly??? ... no big deal .... some discussions .... obvious differences of opinions ..... both parties eventually saw there would be no reconciliation ..... asked to resign .... did ..... and then we hear about it ...

Neither you nor I really know what happened.....

"Not that it makes a difference, but didn't Opinion250's first artice on this say that because he quit there would be no severance?"

Technically that is probably quite true. You would have to see the contract. This is waht most people seem to fail to understand. Technically he was not an employee. He was a contractor. His contract would stipulate the conditions when there is a breach, no matter who caused it. You can bet your bottom dollar that the University's lawyer would have looked at this and advised the UNBC what it would have to do. If there was room for movement, there would have been a compromise agreement.

When someone asks if there will be severance .... Rix can respond,quite accurately, that there will be no severance.

http://www.allbusiness.com/human-resources/workforce-management/4083431-1.html

Here is a review of the advantages and disadvantages of having a specific written employment contract for a CEO.

This is the reason why such a contract has to be written with both parties in mind.

"It helps attract better candidates for the CEO position. A candidate might be more likely to come to work for your credit union if certain guarantees are locked in by a contract, such as base salary, bonuses, benefits and causes for termination."

Another factor to consider is legal costs. We don't know exactly what happened, but there's a good chance that either Cozzetto considers the situation to have been different from what was advertised to him or that this is a forced "resignation". It might even be that he wanted to leave but that when he let the Board know, they decided they wanted him to leave immediately, not when he proposed. The point is, in any situation in which he felt that he had been ill-used by UNBC, he could have sued. Even if his suit was ultimately unsuccessful, the cost to UNBC of defending it could easily have been hundreds of thousands of dollars, not to mention the harder to quantify cost of disruption of the administration and board of governors. Although it seems like a lot of money to us, the severance that he got may well have saved UNBC money in the long run.

I really have to wonder what will be accomplished by yet another reorganization. I was on the faculty during the first one, from four faculties to two colleges, and I don't think that it made much difference. In that case, since it eliminated two deans, it may have saved a little salary. It also resulted in the removal of Chemistry and Physics from Robin Fisher's domain, which was good since he hates science, but that was due to the accident of having someone like Fisher as dean, not to any inherent virtue of the new structure.

Going from two colleges to seven schools will presumably increase the administrative costs. Moreover, although part of the motivation for the reorganization seems to be increased interdisciplinarity, it is hard to see how increasing the number of administrative units won't if anything cause greater fragmentation.

Posted by: owl on June 21 2008 6:57 PM

"BTW, the annual salary is not that much more than a medical health officer which has much less reponsibilities associated with it, in my opinion."

Hmm, screw up running a University (nearly akin to being a property manager), the end result would be "stupid people" or lack thereof. Mess up as a medical health officer might have some more devasting outcome, like Death. Nice logic.

A personal and professional cost? Say what, the man couldn't shake enough hands for one half million. Can't fulfill a contract, why bother when rescue severance is available?

The visioning proposal was the work of Howard Brunt during his 3 years in UNBC. With him gone, the visioning may be shelved for good.

pisspulper ....

seems you are rather glib about the duties and accountabilities of a CEO of a University and know very little about the duties and accountabilities of a regional medical health officer.

A medical health officer will not have a patient die due to misdiagnosis, nor error during a surgical procedure, nor error in prescribing medication, etc. etc. .. in other words, medical health officers are not the typical subject of malpractice suits because their main duties are to raise awareness, provide data, provide advice to other government agencies, in addition to running public health programs to prevent the spread of disease. Theirs is primarly a prevention and control role of a large population and not one of diagnosis and treatment of individuals.

However, many doctors who are subject to such suits, earn less than a medical health officer by the time they pay the costs of operating their practice.

Even occuaptional safety officers at a manufacturing plant carry more liability than a public health officer and get a fraction of the pay.

Read the public health act to see what the duties of a regional health officer are.

http://www.leg.bc.ca/38th4th/1st_read/gov23-1.htm

Brunt .... another hiccup.....

billposer ... finally some wise words from someone .....

I think that this whole thing is a shame, alot of good Sr. staff left or were forced to leave because of Cozzetto. People bad mouth Jago and that's their opinion, but I saw a man build an institution to be proud of. Too bad Cozzetto has it looking like the funny farm now. I'm glad that arrogant American and his new Canadian son are gone.

UNBC is a public institution, therefore what is in anyones contract that works there should be open to public scrutiny.
Because there are so many backroom closed door agreements made with the old boys club, we will never know what goes on.

This problem needs to change. NOW

Owl

Yes, you are correct. I am rather glib about a University Ceo's duties and responsiblities.

"A medical health officer will not have a patient die due to misdiagnosis, nor error during a surgical procedure, nor error in prescribing medication, etc. etc. .. in other words, medical health officers are not the typical subject of malpractice suits because their main duties are to raise awareness, provide data, provide advice to other government agencies, in addition to running public health programs to prevent the spread of disease. Theirs is primarly a prevention and control role of a large population and not one of diagnosis and treatment of individuals."

"However, many doctors who are subject to such suits, earn less than a medical health officer by the time they pay the costs of operating their practice."

"Read the public health act to see what the duties of a regional health officer are."


Now in response to those comments, I would ask YOU to reevaluate your interpretation of a medical health officers duties and roles. While they don't necessarily treat and diagnose patients, their overall responsibility to the publics health and well being is far more significant than what you infer. I thought you were wiser than that, I shall restrain from citing examples and provide you the opportunity to amend your interpretation.

Furthermore, the salaries are not in question, however unfair they may be. What do malpractice suits have to do with this discussion?

My overwhelming beef is that there was a contract and there is an obligation to fulfill same. Regardless of the conditions and parameters of this particular contract, and the manner in which it has been exited from, the public needs accountability. The issue here is the severance payout. This contract is a taxpayer public sector agreement, so I am concerned when an individual renegs on the deal and is rewarded for it. Whatever the reasoning for failure to complete the task at hand is irrelevant. How do we not know what disasterous legacy has been left behind with 3 years left on the contract? When I am expected to do a job at work and I fail to do so, I am rewarded with EI, not a half million dollar boot out the door.

If this were a private sector contract, sure it could still cost me at the end of the day, if I had connection to the University, but I dont't. This payout rewards failure and incompetence perhaps, just like the many other public sector, taxpayer funded severance packages. What message are we sending? It's Ok screw them, they're use to it and powerless to reverse it?

lostfaith
if Cozzetto was to stay you would be 100% correct, it was anything but that pre Cozzetto. Alot has happened in the last 2 years so lets keep the facts straight on who did what.

Here's a big question I haven't seen discussed. He quite right after the board agreed to run in the minus for the next year. Which is a fairly illegal move if I'm not mistaken - or at least highly frowned upon. Whats the chances this had anything to do with his resigning/ being asked to resign? Maybe that was the planned scape goat all along?

No wonder why UNBC tuitions have been an absolute rip off lately with declining customer service!! These clowns are using this institution as a boys club to line their pockets!

Posted by: attitude on June 23 2008 7:42 AM
lostfaith
if Cozzetto was to stay you would be 100% correct, it was anything but that pre Cozzetto. Alot has happened in the last 2 years so lets keep the facts straight on who did what.

Please elaborate.

I think the board at least payed him 150,000$ extra because there was a case of Tenure full professor in UNBC who was forced to resign when Cozzetto joined
and he was not offered any money.

Another faculty last year asked for buyout and he was denied because he was told Buyout option is only for a number of specific programs.

If Cozzetto have stayed less than 2 years in UNBC (according to UNBC rules) he is not even entitled to take away the share of pension contributions paid by UNBC to his pension.

Something is very fishy about the board's dealing with Cozzetto. 150,000 is 2 years salary of a faculty.

From what I have heard, Cozzetto was an iron fisted ruler....his way or no way, if you don't agree with him he will just remove you. As far as his budgeting abilities...didn't have a freeking clue on how to run a budget meeting or understand the whole budget process. He sure pulled the wool over the hiring committees eyes.

I think the budget cabinet would have to put a deficit budget to the board of govenor and they would have to allow that to happen.....I believe that's how it is

Rix and Randall in the picture above look exactly like two guys caught with their fingers in the cookie jar.

There is much more to this than meets the eye, however we will all be **Mushroomed** as usual, that seems to the the way in Prince George the **Serengeti on the North**

The UNBC board is planning to bring the next UNBC interim president from outside UNBC. Someone who has no clue of what is going on in UNBC and can be played by the interest groups in UNBC, instead of doing the right thing this one time and hire an interim president from UNBC who is clean and had good performance and can put a quick end to the abuse and discontent of faculty.

UNBC board's mark is F.

I agree an F for the Board. They need to hire from within and this idea that a president requires some special skill set is bogus IMO. There are many capable people in this town and at that university that can do the job and for a lot less. It looks to me like there is no respect for the student slaving for tuition costs and that the board has done someting illegal otherwise there never would hve been this kind of compensation deal to begin with.

The only plus in the whole deal is that Dr Riz has made, I believe, large cash donations to the university in the past that more than cover for this whole fiasco... and so in a way he did pay for part of the cost of his problem.

We have a serious problem with the post secondary education boards in this town. CNC a few years back giving out a contract to bill students over a million dollars a year to a multinational lot maintenance company passing the agenda during a Christmas meeting without even the knowledge of faculty or putting the contract out for tender... and now UNBC is starting to look like it has the same profiteers sitting on its board.....

Hiring someone internally would be a bigger mistake than Cozzetto. Just look at who is left there from the SR admin who has any back ground on what built the university. No one with any qualifications for that job....as for any of the profs...they all seem to have there own adgenda. What they need is for someone who has left or dismissed....an old VP or something like that. Someone who has and knows the history there and can rebuild what was once there.

Cozzetto was nothing, and deserves nothing. He resigned, it was his choice. Where do public institutions have the right to find money like that, when so many other things are sorely needed!! It is literally criminal. I wonder how the people he needlessly axed in his short stay feel.