Category Archives: Municipal politics

Explaining Council Expenses

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Australian council expensesTip of the hat to Ian Adams for clearing up any misrepresentation of council’s expenses and clarifying some information, in his most recent blog post.

The total council expense allotment is well under budget this year. It usually is; we are very cautious in how we use our rather limited allotment. However, Scoop doesn’t explain a couple of things about how the allotment affects us individually.

We don’t generally have enough in our council expense accounts to attend more than one event a year – the amount ($4,000 each) alloted has remained the same since at least 2003, although hotel, transportation, booking, events, food, and other costs have all gone up since then.

The conferences we attend are very valuable – there are many workshops, seminars, discussion groups, plus vendor areas where we get to see other types of product and services. It was at Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) conference that many of us first encountered fabric buildings as alternate structures for recreation and other uses. In fact, we provided sales material about them to staff at least as far back as 2010.

I’ve attended workshops at these conventions on communications, social media, asset management, the Municipal Act, QR codes, online security, budgeting, sustainability, waste management, library collection management, staffing, libel and slander, infrastructure life cycles, planning issues, building codes… and many other topics.

At some of these conferences, there are so many interesting or useful seminars that it’s difficult to select the few we can schedule. AMO is usually a very busy three days.

Plus there is a lot of networking at these events – talking with other councillors, staff or board members from other municipalities, discussing contemporary issues, hearing how they resolved problems, what they’re dealing with, and so on. 

At AMO, we can also meet with provincial ministers and their representatives, to discuss specific topics of local interest such as funding opportunities. Because we’re in Ottawa for AMO, we also have the opportunity to meet with federal politicians and departments.

Adams notes:

Ian Chadwick’s expenses in 2012 are $5,100 (he’s gone a little overbudget this year). I can only assume he was using the money to feed his ukelele addiction, as there can be no other explanation for it.

Sorry, Ian (and conspiracy theorists). I have a less nefarious explanation.

This year I attended two conferences, AMO (which I usually attend rather than FCM which is most often out of province – I’ve only ever been to FCM when it was held in Toronto at which time I didn’t get to AMO), and the Ontario Library Association conference in Toronto. First time in my 20 years on the board I’ve attended the OLA conference, and first time I’ve attended two conferences in a year.

The OLA event used to be paid for from the library budget, but because council reduced the library’s budget after the event was booked and paid for, the money had to be added to my council expenses, not the library’s. So my expenses ran over - it’s the first time in the last decade that it has done so. Mea culpa, but not going would have cost the registration fee anyway.

Not a single ukulele was added to my collection as a result of my attendance (not even at my own expense…). However, some books from the vendor area at OLA were added to the library’s collection, and the library has purchased a new digital newsreader for its customers. That comes from spending a couple of hours in the vendor area talking to publishers, service providers and manufacturers about what they had on display.

Council cell phone/data charges are billed to our expenses, too, as are per-diem payments for day-long events. These total roughly $1,000 a year per councillor, or about a quarter of our allotment. That doesn’t leave a lot for professional development. AMO alone costs each of us between $2,000 and-$2,500 – registration, hotel, transportation to and from Ottawa, meals, etc.

This is a challenge because there are several other events - regional AMO workshops, governance seminars or board-related conventions – many of us would also like to attend to help build our knowledge and understanding. Our budgets generally don’t allow us to do that much more professional development without doing over the established limit. Certainly we don’t have enough for two major conferences in a year.

I’ve asked staff to look at our expenses at budget time to see what options we have for improved professional development.

Anyway, the point of all this is that council is very parsimonious with its expenses (not like those characters shown in the photos, above). We face challenges in trying to achieve a reasonable level of professional development within that budget, and to effectively make ourselves, better, more knowledgeable and better-connected council members. Thanks to Adams for raising this, so I could explain. Merry Christmas.

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A Council Christmas Carol – part 1

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STAVE ONE.

Winter driving

It was one of those long winter days. I was back in town late, that Thursday, well after dark, driving down the main street watching the heavy snow cover the road and sidewalks. I’d been out of town almost the whole day, entombed in various meetings. Too much time spent driving to and fro, too much coffee, junk food, and not enough exercise. I was tired, hungry, cranky and not at all in the holiday season spirit. All I wanted to do was get home and get into bed.

But first I had to pick up the agenda from town hall. The weather over the next few days was going to be rough and I didn’t want to venture out again until the storm cleared up. I pulled into a parking space nearby and got out. Stumbling over the snowbank, I walked through ankle-deep snow to the entrance. Humbug to the snow, humbug to the cold, humbug to the decorations that graced the downtown. I flashed my key card and opened the locked door.

Damn, it was dark inside. I opened the doorway to the stairwell and flicked the switch. Nothing. Power must have gone out. Well, there were still streetlights on, so it wasn’t pitch black. Except in the stairwell, of course. Nothing I could do about it. I knew the lay of the building well enough that I could feel my way upstairs and to the council room with no problem, if I was careful and slow. I stumbled a bit, but soon reached the second floor and was pawing through the piles of paper in my mail box.

The agenda was there, and it felt to be about 200 pages thick. I groaned. That defined what I’d be doing all weekend: reading and making my notes for Monday’s council meeting. That and shovelling my driveway.

In the feeble light from the street, I could barely make out a the dense type on the front page of the agenda. It promised to be a long meeting. They’d been getting that way, of late. The thick brown envelope under the agenda told me a lengthy in-camera meeting would follow. I sighed and gathered up the paperwork.

I was just about to leave and work my way back downstairs when I heard an odd sound. Metal on metal, a dull but substantial clinking, followed by a dragging sound. What the hell? There wasn’t supposed to be anyone in the building at this time of night, aside from the odd councillor coming to check his mail box. Intruder? I patted my pocket and realized I had left my Blackberry in the car. Couldn’t even call the police. I quietly slipped into the hall, listening to hear the sound again.

Clank, clank. There it was, coming, it seemed, from the council chamber. Something being dragged across the carpet. That puzzled me. There’s nothing valuable in there, not even a mayor’s gavel. Maybe a bottle of well-past-its-best-before-date hot sauce in my drawer, hardly worth breaking and entering for. We all take our computers home – what’s there to steal? I decided to confront whoever it was.

Clank, sssscrape…. clank…. sssscrape… clank….

Now I’m not a superstitious guy, but the hairs on the back of my neck stood up at that sound. It was just too weird. An odd, eerie sound that brought goosebumps.Like someone was dragging heavy chains across the chamber. Or maybe the special effects sounds from a George Romero movie. And then I heard the moan, a low, rasping sound, forced through the tortured lungs of something not quite human. My thoughts turned rapidly from fight to flight.

The Ghost of VOTEBut it was too late. To my shock and horror a luminous shape oozed into the hallway, right through the closed door, barely two meters from where I stood. I dropped my jaw and my bundles of papers as I stood, transfixed. A ghost! I had actually encountered a ghost! Man, did I have a lot of apologizing to do to those psychics I had humiliated in so many blog posts.

The figure coalesced slowly into a ragged spectre of a man, manacled hand and foot and dragging what seemed to be metres of heavy chain. But since I could see through him, I suspected those chains weren’t heavy in my world, just in his spiritual plane.

He was short. Not very imposing for a denizen of the spirit world, and he was wearing a white turtle-neck sweater under a faded blue sports jacket that sported a prominent lapel button with the words, “Harper: 2008″ written on it.

“Coun…sssssilorrrrrrrrrrrrr…. Chadwickkkkk…..,” the apparition hissed as he pointed a scrawny hand at my chest.

“Wh… wh… wh….” I stammered, struggling to remember those meditation exercises about deep breathing. Wasn’t working very well. Must have missed a lesson. I gulped some air and tried to calm down under the chilling influence of his death-cold eyes. “What do you want from me?”

“Muchhhhhhhhhhh!” It was a vaguely familiar voice, no doubt about it. Even the face was almost, but not quite recognizable. Was this the spirit of someone I knew? Or was I imagining the likeness to someone living? It was hard to tell, with all that glow-in-the-dark makeup.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Assssk me who I wassss…ssss….sss.”

“What?”

“Assssk me who I wassss!”

“Uh, look, I’m sorry, but it’s hard to understand you. I think it’s the reverb in your voice. Can you tone it down a bit? Otherwise we’ll be here all night, you saying something, me saying what, you repeating yourself.”

“Ask me who I was. Is that better?”

“Yeah, thanks. You’re a bit odd, for a shade, you know. I expected someone… taller. Okay, I’ll bite. Who were you?” I raised my voice, feeling a little more confidence.

“In life, I was your conscience, Councillor Chadwick. These days I am the ghossssst of… councilssss passsst….” the spirit said.

“There’s that reverb thing again. I’m losing you.”

“Sorry. It’s part of the package. Can you hear me now?”

“Perfectly. Look, I don’t think my conscience has died.I clearly recall using it recently in a vote over a casino.”

“Gaming facility,” the spirit corrected. “Slot barn. Hardly a casino.”

“Whatever. Look, I’m pretty sure I still have mine and even if it’s buried deep in this black heart of a politician, It wouldn’t leave me without a significant bribe, and to date I haven’t managed to get as much as a cup of coffee from a developer. So who are you really?”

“I am the ghost of many who kept our councils on the straight and narrow. We held you accountable, we held your feet to the political fire. We made public your sins. We could have been your salvation, had you heeded us.”

“Ah, a ratepayer’s group. You mean VOTE, don’t you? Humbug. Weren’t you simply a special interest group created to get a slate of politicians elected to council one year?”

“That, too,” the spirit admitted with a small shrug, then raised a crooked finger towards the ceiling. “But we served a loftier purpose as well. Good governansssssssss… was our true mandate”

“Let’s agree to disagree on that point. Okay, so spirits walk the earth. Why come to me?”

“It is required of every politician,” the Ghost returned, waving his chained arms over his head and rattling them, “that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world—oh, woe is me!—and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to due process!”

“I think you’ve got the wrong politician. I’m on municipal council. I don’t have the expense account to travel far and wide. Ottawa is as far as I’ve ever gone. I think you want our Member of Parliament. MPs get to go to China and India. They buy fighter jets.  We buy buses. Let me give you her address.” I patted my pocket for my missing Blackberry.

Again the spectre raised a cry; it shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands.

“Okay, okay. Sorry to disappoint you,” I said, still trembling a bit at that soul-searing sound. “Listen, what’s with the chains?”

“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?”

“Well, it kind of looks like the mayor’s chain of office, if you bought it in the dollar store that is. But every link has the letters O, A and T on  it. Some sort of cereal?”

Every politician has to carry a chain like this as heavy and as long as they have served their own self-interest. It is a ponderous chain!

“They stand for Openness, Accountability and Transparency” replied the Ghost. “Every politician has to carry a chain like this as heavy and as long as they have served their own self-interest. It is a ponderous chain!”

“Ponderous. I like that word. reminds me of a public planning meeting. So you were you a politician in your past life. From a former council, perhaps? Did you ever donate $100 to cover a ratepayer’s group’s legal bills when they were suing the town? Or maybe you were a real estate agent? They’re always caught up in conflict of interest and haunting the halls while council debates a land sale. ”

“I have at sat the table,” the Ghost replied. “I have served the public interest, but served my own agendas as well. And for that, I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. Weary journeys lie before me!”

I put my hands in my pants pockets as I pondered what the ghost had said. “You must have been very clumsy about it,” I observed,” Sounds like you got caught with your hands in the cookie jar. Or maybe the voters realized who you were and chucked you out of office. Pursing personal agendas too aggressively will do that.”

At that, the spirit cried in anguish and rattled his chains so loudly it made me step back. “You’re not making me feel good about this meeting, spirit. Haven’t you got anything positive to say?”

“I have none,” the Ghost replied, shaking his head. “I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere.”

“Ex-politicians have that effect on people,” I answered. The spirit nodded glumly.

“Well, you certainly took your time about it. Haunting town hall, I mean,” I observed, in a business-like manner, though with humility and deference, in case the spirit had something more than just noisy lamentations for me.

“Took me time!” the Ghost repeated with an edge to his voice.

“Well face, it. VOTE imploded four or five years ago,” I responded. “Pretty much everyone left; just a half-dozen of diehards stuck it out to the bitter end. I don’t think anyone around here even remembers them by name these days. A few of us recall the police investigation, of course. Gets a chuckle when you’re swapping stories at the AMO conference.”

“The whole time since,” said the Ghost. “I have had no rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse.”

“I get that remorse thing if you’re talking about last term,” I said. “But it must have been pretty quiet this term. We’re behaving well at council.”

“You wish,” replied the Ghost. “Why do you think I’m here in the dead of winter? I could be haunting someone in Florida, you know.”

“Come on,” I said. ”You can’t have that many issues to raise with us. We’ve been sticking pretty close to the procedural bylaw. Hardly an in-camera meeting worth mentioning. Oath of office is still shiny and nary a spot of tarnish on it. Not like last term. Not a single incident of spying on council emails has raised its head.”

The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the bylaw officers, should they have been present, would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.

Oh! Political fool, bound, and double-ironed! You not know the ages of incessant labour by immoral creatures in whose footsteps you tread

“Oh! Political fool, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom, “You not know the ages of incessant labour by immoral creatures in whose footsteps you tread, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of your kind is developed. Not to know that any councillor working in your own little sphere will find your mortal life too short for your vast avarice. No space of regret can make amends for one life’s dedicated to self-interest!”

“You remind me of someone who set council’s gold standard for personal agendas.” I said. “Can you imagine putting political junk mail from your party of choice on the consent agenda? Gotta be a low, even for a politician. Immoral creatures that we are.”

“Personal agenda!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my agenda. The common welfare was my agenda; I lived only to educate the masses in the higher meaning of wholesome ideologies.”

“Uh, yeah. I read the party platform. It came in the mail. Went right into the blue bin. Sorry.”

The spirit held up its chain at arm’s length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.

“Hear me!” cried the Ghost. “My time is nearly gone.”

“I will,” I said. “But get to the point! Don’t be so flowery!”

“How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell,” the spirit said with a slow sigh. “I have sat invisible beside you, beside all of council, during many and many a meeting.”

It was not an agreeable idea. I shivered, thinking of those dead eyes peering at my laptop screen while a meeting progressed. At least I wasn’t caught playing solitaire during a council meeting. “Even the in camera stuff?”

“That is no light part of my penance,” pursued the Ghost. “I am here tonight to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A slim chance.”

“Ever wonder how a slim chance and a fat chance mean the same thing?” I asked.

“You will be haunted,” resumed the Ghost, “by three spirits.”

“Come on! What sort of chance is that? I need to get home and get dinner. Besides I don’t want to miss tonight’s episode of Downton Abby. Can’t it wait until next weekend?

“No way, José. This weekend it is. Time of the year for epiphanies, and all that.”

“I—I think I’d rather not,” I picked up the papers from the hall floor and tucked them under my arm. “There are eight others at the table, surely one of them isn’t planning anything tonight. What about the DM? He deserves a good haunting, don’t you think?”

“Without their visits,” continued the Ghost, ignoring my protests, “you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls one.”

“The bell tolls? Where do you get this script? Couldn’t I take ’em all at once, and get it over with?”

“Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate.”

“I have a digital clock. It doesn’t vibrate. Unless you mean my Blackberry. Look, that’s three late nights. I’m not a spring chicken any more. If I don’t get my full eight hours of shut-eye and I’m cranky for the rest of the day. These friends of yours won’t like me if I’m cranky.”

“Look to see me no more,” the Ghost answered. “For your own sake, remember what has passed between us!”

“Like I could forget a memorable evening like this.”

“You think the public will re-elect a smart-ass? Keep it up and I’ll write nasty things about you on my blog.”

When it had said these words, the spectre walked backward from me; and at every step it took, the door to the council chamber opened itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open.

It beckoned me to approach, which I did. When we were within two paces of each other, the Ghost held up its hand, warning me to come no nearer.

I stopped. Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising of that hand, I heard a babble of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated into the dark Chamber.

I followed to the door, desperate in my curiosity, and looked in.

The air around the room was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like the Ghost who had spoken with me; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Some I personally recognized as former mayors and councillors; others I knew only by their photographs that line the hall near the mayor’s office. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good or worse, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.

I knew that feeling. I had served on  council long enough to know what impotence meant, in a metaphorical sense anyway. Was this my fate? To forever haunt the council chambers quoting lines from the Municipal Act? I left the door, hurried down the stairs, and out of doors, not caring if I tripped in the dark. I really needed to get home. And get a stiff drink once I arrived.

To be continued…

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Gambling and the local economy part 2

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MoneySeventy three dollars. It’s not a large amount if you’re middle class, certainly not if you’re Conrad Black. But for others it can be significant. If you’re on minimum wage, it’s a full day’s wage, before taxes. If you’re a senior on a fixed income, it’s a week’s groceries.

It’s also the average amount a typical gambler spends at one time in a gaming facility in Ontario, according to the answers I got from my questions sent months ago to the OLG. The clerk gave me their answers last night, only after the discussion about extending the OLG deadline.

Seventy three dollars. It will get spent in 1.75 hours; the average length of a visit to a casino. That’s about $41 an hour.

When multiplied by 12.8, it totals $934.40. Twelve-point-eight is the average number of times a typical gambler visits a gaming facility in a year. The average gambler will spend almost $1,000 every year in a gaming facility.

Again, it’s not a stunning amount. If you have some discretionary income, it’s equivalent to a mid-level laptop computer, an iPad maxed out with all the accessories, a good, flat-screen TV, a good custom-made ukulele, a case of premium scotch or tequila. An air flight to Mexico or Cuba. Or for others, it’s a month’s rent. Three months’ car payments. Groceries for a family for two months, maybe longer. 

Problem gamblingConsider the potential problem gamblers here in Collingwood. I estimated them to be about 700 people in my last blog post on gambling, based on the percentages OLG provides.

Multiply 700 by $934.40 and you get more than $654,000.

Assuming these 700 people attend a local gaming facility (a windowless warehouse with up to 300 slot machines – the OLG gets prickly if you refer to them as “slot barns”), and spend the same amount as average gamblers, Collingwood’s problem gamblers could spend $654,080 a year in a gaming facility. But of course, they will probably spend more, because they’re problem gamblers. I’ll come back to that.

And what about those others who are  not problem gamblers yet, but are ”at risk” from becoming problem gamblers? That’s about 1,200 more local people. If they are also “average” gamblers, they will spend about $1.2 million annually in the facility.

Add these two groups together – the smallest percentage of gamblers but the most problematic - and they will collectively spend almost $2 million a year in a local gaming facility. That’s money not going into the local economy.

Well, okay, five percent of it will come back to us: the town will get about $93,000 from our problem gamblers. For every ‘average” person who attends a potential gaming facility, the town will get $49. Win or lose, we tax you for playing.

Let’s say our problem gamblers spend the same amount per hour ($41), but stay three hours per visit, instead of the average 1.75. That means they could spend about $125 per visit, or $1,600 a year – about $1.12 million a year for those 700 people. And then there are those “potential problem gamblers…” If they spend 3 hours per stay, we get more than $3.1 million spent by 2,000 Collingwood residents.

You can endlessly speculate on these figures, guessing how much people will spend versus how much intervention a gaming facility will use to keep them out. There’s no concrete number we can use, no absolute figures. Just realize that the potential exists for local residents to spend a lot of money gambling.

Personally, I would rather see that money spent at local stores, eating at local restaurants, buying food, furniture, books, musical instruments, cameras, clothing, pet supplies… but with the OLG launching online gambling n 2013, the money may be spent outside local businesses even without a slot warehouse in town.

You can use these numbers to work out a few possible numbers about attendance. If, as the OLG suggests, the town might get $1 to $2 million a year, a gaming facility would need to bring in between $19 and $38 million a year for us to get our rake-off.*

To get $19 million, at the average $934 a year, you need more than 20,000 people gambling there every year. You need more than 40,000 to get $38 million. To get the unsupported-by-OLG-but-often-quoted-locally figure of $3 million per year to the town, you need to have 60,000 “average” gamblers annually.

That’s a lot of wear and tear on our infrastructure. Twenty thousand more cars a year on the highway and on local roads. Or forty, even sixty thousand. And more…

Twenty thousand people at a year-round slot barn averages to 55 people a day. Not very many, especially for 300 slot machines. Forty thousand means 110 gamblers a day. But of course the visits will not be homogenized, but bunched at holidays and weekends (yes, these facilities are open Christmas and Easter…).

And of course averages are just snapshots of the middle ground. there will be people who spend less, other who will spend more. Some will come for a couple of hours of entertainment and spend $25. Others will spend a full day in front of a machine pumping quarters into its ever-hungry mouth.

A municipality needs to plan for the days when the slot warehouse will be full, with people coming and going 24 hours a day. We’ll need every penny of that revenue to upgrade and widen roads, install traffic lights, hire more police and bylaw officers to control parking and speeding…

I have yet to be convinced by any argument that a “gaming facility” offers any significant benefits to the town aside from a handful of hospitality-sector jobs.

Gambling cycle
~~~~~

* According to the OLG, it already takes approx. $6 million a year in Collingwood from net sales of lottery tickets at the 22 locations that sell them here. This would be on top of that.

 

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Conspiracies, Secret Meetings and Backroom Deals

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Conspiracy theoriesAs the year comes to a close, I think it’s about time I ‘fessed up about the conspiracies, secret meetings, backroom deals, hidden commissions and other underhanded dealings council has had this term.

There haven’t been any.

Sorry about that. I know how many people have built little, angry sand castles out of the notion we have been secretly plotting in backrooms and handing out commission cheques like drunken pirates on a shore leave, but the simple truth is that we haven’t.

I know, I know, that ruins the whole conspiracy theory thing for some folks. I might as well have said UFO abductions aren’t real or that homeopathy isn’t medicine.

I can only offer a glimmer of hope that we still have two years left to go, so there’s still a chance we might fail to live up to our oath of office in future. A slim chance, mind you, but those odds don’t stop people from buying lottery tickets.

Take the terminals, for example. It’s a lot more fun to imagine nefarious deals struck in the dark corners of the silos (Who handed them the keys? Who took their dollar? Whose idea was this? Dorothy, I’ve got your dog….) than to believe we met in camera to deal with the rather mundane but lengthy process of due diligence, replete with sleep-inducing discussions over convoluted contracts, terms, liability and finances. It takes the glow off everything when our dark secret involves advice from the town’s real estate brokers and legal opinions about selling an old, creaky industrial building (and all the liability and complexity that a brownfield-cum-heritage site on the waterfront entails).

Could some of that have been discussed in the open? Perhaps a little. But it’s not so easy to extract those fragments of property matters from the rest, and sometimes it’s hard to tell until after a discussion whether all of it needed to be in camera. If I failed to stop the meeting so we could rise to public session to debate, say, the condition of the roof, and then retreat back in camera to continue with the rest, I apologize. It wasn’t done to hide anything, just that the discussion moved quickly and most issues were properly dealt with in camera.

I understand that from the outside, it may look like we’re doing the double-double-toil-and-trouble routine in the “cone of silence” but all we were doing is just treading the slow path of bureaucracy and legality, under the watchful eyes of staff (who wield a rather mean Municipal Act when we stray). We call it “due diligence.”

It must disappoint a few readers that this council has had a LOT fewer closed-door meetings than last council, where it seemed sometimes, we were closeted for hours at a time, every Monday. The prosaic but dull truth is that as the municipal government, we have issues we need to discuss in camera and the Municipal Act clearly lays them out. Just read the Act.

Conspiracy theory 2Are their malevolent lobbyists scurrying around in the shadows, twisting our arms to broker their deals, perhaps mesmerizing us with under-the-table gifts so we vote a certain way? Another apology. I know that some of you really want to believe that, but not one councillor I have spoken to was approached a single time or lobbied over any decision we’ve made at the table. As for gifts, I have yet to be bought a coffee by a lobbyist, let alone a yacht or a Mediterranean cruise.

We’re anachronisms, it seems, by today’s political standards: tediously honest and boringly dedicated.

And the town didn’t cut anyone a cheque for those services or sales. No commission cheques. That must burst a few bubbles, and not the ice rink-swimming pool kind. I know you won’t rest easy until you can lift every rock and uncover something untoward, but so far that search has proven as barren of life as the soils of Mars. Just because it never happened shouldn’t stop anyone from filing a Freedom of Information request, if you need the reassurance. Again.

Backroom deals? You mean the “barbeque politics” where we do the nudge-nudge-wink-wink over a beer and a slap on the back? Haven’t been any that I’ve been invited to. I’ve had coffee a few mornings with one or two councillors, and we’ve exchanged personal thoughts on agenda items and municipal matters, but two or even three  councillors meeting at public places is a pretty thin context for a conspiracy, let alone a coup. We’re having all of our “awkward discussions” in public, at the table, I’m afraid, not in cliques.

Yes, we’ve stumbled here and there over procedural issues and we’re not always good at communicating with the public. We’re so eager to get things done, and move on, that we might appear hasty to some people. Overall, those are minor faults; they don’t exactly point to a cabal of malfeasant councillors scheming and plotting for personal gain. By and large this is a good, effective, council.

For those of you who like to dabble in conspiracy theories, I’m afraid this council is a disappointment. You won’t get much satisfaction from us this term. But take heart: all is not lost, You still have the Mayan Apocalypse to look forward to.

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The Known Unknowns

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Known Unknowns“There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know,” said United States Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld in a now-famous statement. “There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that, we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don’t know.”

Monday night, Council was treated to a “known unknown” when we were asked to approve a motion* that condemned a report that at least seven of us had never seen, let alone read.
 
The report in question was written to justify erecting wind turbines near the Collingwood Airport. The motion expressed concerns about the location of some of these proposed turbines – they may lie too close to the flight paths for landing and takeoff. I have no problem with that – I share their concerns. I have no issues with wind turbines in general, and am supportive of alternate energy projects, where they do not present potential safety issues. My concern would be for the placement of specific turbines, not turbines in general.

There were several ways to present this. The airport board could have provided a copy of the reports mentioned in the motion for council to read. A single copy, placed in the council room a week before the meeting, would have sufficed. The board could have done a presentation that showed slides of the proposed turbine locations and the sections of the report considered contentious, and explained to council and the public why these locations were worrisome. The board could have written the motion to refer to the turbines without making reference to specific sections of the report, but dealing in general with concerns about safety and the turbine locations.

None of these were done. Council did not even get a written staff report explaining the issues. We never even saw a map identifying the proposed turbines. Instead, we were asked to condemn some very specific sections of a report that we never saw.

All we got were the terse minutes from an Airport Services Board that included the original recommendation and a comment that the chair of the board expressed concerns about  the turbines and had written a motion to challenge the report:

“…expressed his concerns to the recommendations provided in the Project Description Report as they do not address or acknowledge the concerns of the airport with respect to the safety of the aircraft when coming to and leaving the airport.”

There is no indication in the minutes that any of the other board members expressed similar concerns, and neither of Collingwood’s two council representatives on the board (Deputy Mayor Lloyd and Councillor Edwards) spoke about the reports when the motion was presented to council. I assume they have read them – but neither said they had done so when the motion was presented.

The Enterprise-Bulletin story notes,

Councillor Mike Edwards noted the board would not have presented a recommendation “if it had not been factual.” Councillor Keith Hull pointed out council recently approved the demolition of the Mountainview Hotel based on a staff recommendation: “We didn’t need to read the documents on how to take down the building.”

“Time is of the essence to get this to the province,” added Deputy-mayor Rick Lloyd. “This is not anti-wind turbine; this is a safety issue for the airport.”

Factual or not, I feel it dishonest to approve a motion that refers to a document that I have never seen or read. By this logic, council should be merely a rubber stamp for committees, and doing our due diligence is unnecessary. When I worked for magazines and newspapers, I would never have written a review of a film I’d never seen or a book I’d never read.

As for the Mountainview Hotel, that’s a canard: council was asked to approve the demolition, not the contract for doing so. In the same manner, we approved the construction of two fabric structures for our rec facilities – we were not asked to approve the contracts with the builder. Had we been asked to approve either contract, would it have been ethical to approve them without seeing them first?

This motion was about specific documents and specific sections within those documents, not just concerns about airport safety. It could have been written in a way to deal with the general considerations of airport safety, but it was written differently to bring forward the reports themselves.

When we were asked to approve the Official Plan or Sustainability Plan or the Active Transportation Plan, council was provided with both a copy of the documents, and received a presentation to highlight key sections in each. Why was this motion done differently?

The board chair, Charlie Tatham is quoted in the Collingwood Connection as saying on Monday night,

“We believe that this is a dangerous proposition. Here’s our chance to rub their noses in it and make sure it doesn’t go by unchallenged,”

I don’t disagree that turbines in close proximity to an airport is dangerous. However, I don’t believe it is the role of a municipal council to rub anyone’s noses in anything. The originally proposed motion (see below) was inflammatory in its language, but was toned down by staff before the meeting.

I asked for a deferral until the next meeting to give council the opportunity to review the documents were were being asked to condemn. To me, that was simply doing the due diligence I believe is my responsibility as a councillor. No one seconded my motion. Council passed the motion 8-1, approving the unknowns.

~~~~~

* Here is the motion in its entirety as revised and read at the table. The sections that concerned me are in red:
Whereas it is noted in the technical guidelines for a Renewable Energy Approval that if the proponent believes that a negative environmental impact has no potential to occur, the draft project description report should include an explanation of how this determination was made;
AND WHEREAS the Project Description Report and Appendix C in particular (Stantec, May, 2012) contains virtually no reference to Collingwood Regional Airport;
AND WHEREAS the Collingwood Regional Airport Services Board and Collingwood Council express significant concerns with Section 5.65 of the Design and Operations Report (Stantec, May, 2012) with respect to the potential impact of turbines 1, 3, 4, and 8 on aircraft operations arriving and departing Collingwood Regional Airport, and the attendant negative impacts to airport operations, all as described in the Charlie Cormier report dated August 23, 2012;
BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED THAT the Council of the Corporation of the Town of Collingwood inform the Ministry of the Environment that the documents submitted in support of the application by WPD for project approval under the Renewable Energy Act does not adequately report on the negative impacts of the proposed wind farm, and it is not in compliance with the Environmental Protection Act, the Green Energy Act, and Ontario Regulation 359/09, because the proponent has failed to carry out the assessment required by O.Reg. 359/09 of any negative environmental effects that may result from the development of a wind farm in the close proximity of the Collingwood Regional Airport, and in turn has failed to identify modifications to the proposal to reduce or remove the negative impacts.

The original motion, as proposed in the agenda and in the airport board mintures, was more confrontational, and I had also expressed concerns about the wording (noted in red, below) before the council meeting:
THAT Council of the Town of Collingwood, Township of Clearview and Town of Wasaga Beach consider the following motion:
WHEREAS it is noted in the technical guidelines for a Renewable Energy Approval that if
the proponent believes that a negative environmental impact has no potential to occur, the
draft project description report should include an explanation of how this determination was made;
AND WHEREAS the Project Description Report and Appendix C in particular (Stantec, May, 2012) contains virtually no reference to Collingwood Regional Airport;
AND WHEREAS Section 5.65 of the Design and Operations Report (Stantec, May, 2012) is fundamentally flawed, inadequate, and misleading with respect to the potential impact of
turbines 1, 3, 4, and 8 on aircraft operations arriving and departing Collingwood Regional
Airport, and the attendant negative impacts to airport operations, all as described in the
Charlie Cormier report dated August 23, 2012;
BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED THAT the Ministry of the Environment be informed that
the Council of the Corporation of the Town of Collingwood believes that the documents
submitted in support of the application by wpd for project approval under the Renewable
Energy Act are inadequate and incomplete, and not in compliance with the Environmental
Protection Act, the Green Energy Act, and Ontario Regulation 359/09, because the
proponent has failed to carry out the assessment required by O.Reg. 359/09 of any negative environmental effects that may result from the engaging in the project upon Collingwood Regional Airport and on the social/economic wellbeing of the Georgian Triangle area, and in turn has failed to identify modifications to the proposal to reduce or remove the negative impacts.

 

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Mayors Under Siege: Why Laws Must Change

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Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is planning to appeal the recent judicial decision that ousted him from office for failing to obey one of the basic rules of municipal governance. In fact, during the hearing, he admitted never having read the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, one of the key pieces of legislation that govern municipal politicians, even once during his decade on council.

Superior Court Justice Charles Hackland wrote a 24-page decision that called Ford’s  “wilful blindness” inexcusable, and said:

“It is difficult to accept an error-in-judgment defence based essentially on a stubborn sense of entitlement (concerning his football foundation) and a dismissive and confrontational attitude to the integrity commissioner and the ‘code of conduct’.”

Ford, of course, blames the “lefties” for his own failings. Coming out of court, Ford said:

“This comes down to left-wing politics. The left wing wants me out of here, and they’ll do anything in their power to (do that).”

Ford’s charge is merely a tawdry attempt to dissociate himself from his own responsibilities (and failings), and to attack his political opponents on the basis of party platforms. Partisan politics easily obscure truth and reality through such tactics. Party followers are more willing to believe the platform than the facts (as in the recent US presidential election where the Democrat candidate was labelled a “socialist” by the Republicans).

Ford’s churlish comment also became a much-repeated joke in the Twitter-verse, but on CBC radio, I also heard people interviewed on the street repeating the same inanity, as if the judicial system was hostage to left-wing politics because they found Ford guilty.

Ford timeline

Ford also commented,

“I’m going to fight for the taxpayers of this city like I always have. The calls are coming in fast and furious, telling me to fight it, telling me to run. I’ll never give up fighting for the taxpayers.”

No: Ford is fighting for his reputation and his political career. That is not a fight for the taxpayers (ask yourself which taxes are at risk by Ford’s absence). It is disingenuous to try to associate a personal battle with something for the greater good. The electorate is not fooled by it.

London Mayor Joe Fontana has been charged by the RCMP with fraud, breach of trust by a public officer, and uttering forged documents. He has refused to step down while the charges are investigated, despite attempts by London council to ask him to do so. A non-confidence vote – more symbolic than effectual – was passed by a committee and comes to the council table soon.

Fontana is innocent until proven guilty, of course. Unlike Ford, he didn’t try to blame others for his problems, and declared his innocence. And we should not automatically assume any guilt while the investigation continues. He did, however, refuse to step down until the legal process is completed:

“I’ve been given a mandate by the people of London. People call me every day saying they like the work I’m doing as mayor.”

The mandate given by an electorate is to serve the people, not serve personal or even party agendas. Every mayor has to live up to a higher standard than the electorate, and treat the office with respect and honour. The job comes with some serious responsibilities to act in a manner that reflects those expectations and upholds those standards. The mandate is not simply about taxes or promises: it is about leadership.

When the public feels that the mayor sullies the office, the mayor is seen as rejecting that mandate. Ford and Fontana are treating it like it is their right to stay on and continue, not a privilege granted by the electorate. They are separating themselves from those they are expected to lead and guide.

Ford was removed from the mayor’s chair by a judge because there is no mechanism in the Municipal Act for either a council, integrity commissioner, or the public to remove an elected politician from office outside the courts. Fontana cannot be removed, regardless of council’s vote (and council is only asking him to step aside (with pay) during the investigation, not resign) and the motion is simply symbolic. Fontana can legally ignore it.

These tales of mayoral woe pale in comparison with the ongoing revelations of kickbacks and corruption in Quebec that caused  Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay and Laval Mayor Gilles Vaillancourt to resign in the face of public outrage and police investigation. And today I heard that Winnipeg’s mayor, Sam Katz, faces his own conflict of interest challenge. Mayors are always in the spotlight and cannot hid from the media’s attention.

All of these are examples of poor judgment, arrogance, ignorance and often a misplaced sense of entitlement, these mayors act as if they were both above the law and above public expectations. What they fail to acknowledge by denying wrongdoing and blustering their own defence is that, although mayors only have one vote at the council table, they fill a role that is far more important than a simple councillor.

Mayors have symbolic power as the figurehead at the head of the table; they speak for the municipality. It’s not simply a ceremonial role; they are perceived in the public eye as being both the spokesperson and the role model for the entire community. And a mayor who loses the respect of the community can also polarize the community against the entire political and bureaucratic structure (as we discovered here, last term). The electorate loses confidence in the very process of governance when it loses confidence in its mayor.

What the Municipal Act lacks is any mechanism to either unseat or recall a municipal politician. Not even an integrity commissioner can do that – as in Ford’s case. Nor is there any method for a council to express non-confidence in a mayor or hold a mayor accountable for his or her acts. Voters cannot recall a municipal politician and only have the election to make a statement of displeasure. That’s a problem that can only be resolved by the provincial government putting some enforceable accountability into the act.

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Do We Need a CAO to Run Town Hall?

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Peter Principle cartoon
One of the comments in a rather lengthy letter presented to council recently was about hiring a CAO. The author demanded a “panel of qualified citizens appointed by an independent body* to oversee the recruitment, participate in interviews and the transparent selection process to fill the vacant position of Chief Administrative Officer for the Town of Collingwood.”

Aside from being wildly out of context in a letter ostensibly about local recreation facilities, that non-sequitur underscores a common misunderstanding about the nature of municipal governance and bureaucracy.

Many municipalities have CAOs or someone in that position - sometimes called a City Manager. However, there is no requirement in any provincial legislation for the town to have a CAO or any top-level administrative manager. We are legislated to have a clerk and a treasurer, period. It is entirely at the discretion of council whether to hire anyone else.

The old, but traditional, pyramid-shaped hierarchical management model has widening steps of management and staff descending from a single leader at the top. It may seem logical to have one person at the apex, but that’s more likely out of custom than out of necessity. Other models of management work as well, if not better (see below) in the public sector.

Reading far too often of the malfeasance and greed of corporate CEOs during the recent economic recession and downturn, especially in the financial sector, has considerably eroded any remnants of respect for the top dog position in the private sector. After working in several large private organizations based on that model, and having known and interacted with five town CAOs in the past 20 years, I am not convinced it is the most effective model for bureaucratic governance.

Having a single person at the apex of the municipal management pyramid means that person is the sole fulcrum for the interaction between council and staff. All of the planning, strategizing, communication, policy making and implementation roles are gathered in one person. Council’s direction and wishes are focused through the interpretation of that one person, too.The CAO is boss, yet also subservient at the same time.

Personalities can easily affect the relationship (both between CAO and council and CAO and staff). It requires someone who can put personalities aside, rise above the political milieu, and take on the often uncomfortable role as an objective conduit between council and staff, while trying to meet the needs and expectations of both the town and the transient politicians (a group which changes every few years).

It’s a difficult balancing act, one fraught with stress and potential conflict. It needs wisdom, patience, a Buddha-like calm, a good sense of humour, and a thick skin. Not everyone is suited for the political pushmi-pullyu role of municipal CAO.

Moving upwards in an organization is like being a juggler: you try to keep more balls in the air with every level change, until you finally reach the point at which there are either no more balls to add, or you can’t keep up everything you have in play, so you can’t move forward any more.

The Peter PrincipleIn every organization (including many municipalities), some top managers rise to their position because the promotion escalator is an automatic mechanism that gives people the opportunity to rise within the ranks based almost entirely on seniority. Basically, if you can sit there long enough in these companies, you’ll get promoted: sitzkrieg to reach the top salary slots.

As a result, some people rise to levels outside their particular skill set, experience or comfort level and fail in their new role. This is known as the “Peter Principle“:

…in an organization where promotion is based on achievement, success, and merit, that organization’s members will eventually be promoted beyond their level of ability. The principle is commonly phrased, “employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence.” In more formal parlance, the effect could be stated as: employees tend to be given more authority until they cannot continue to work competently. It was formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book The Peter Principle, a humorous treatise, which also introduced the “salutary science of hierarchiology.”

Dilbert cartoon
This is complemented by the rather more cynical and caustic “Dilbert Principle“:

 …companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management (generally middle management), in order to limit the amount of damage they are capable of doing. In the Dilbert strip of February 5, 1995 Dogbert says that “leadership is nature’s way of removing morons from the productive flow.” Adams himself explained, “I wrote The Dilbert Principle around the concept that in many cases the least competent, least smart people are promoted, simply because they’re the ones you don’t want doing actual work. You want them ordering the doughnuts and yelling at people for not doing their assignments—you know, the easy work. Your heart surgeons and your computer programmers—your smart people—aren’t in management.”

Sometimes people are promoted just to get them out of the way. Dr. Peter also described this in his book, calling it “percussive sublimation”:

…the act of kicking a person upstairs (i.e. promoting him to management) to get him out of the way of productive employees.

He also described the “lateral arabesque” in which an

…incompetent worker is moved laterally or to another location with possibly a longer title.

So where does someone with ambition go after he or she reaches the top rung of the particular job ladder in a municipal organization? Usually to another organization or municipality where there are either more opportunities to move upwards, or where the pay and benefits are better (usually, but not always, associated with increased responsibilities). A lot of top municipal executives have a short (3-5 year) work span in any municipality as they work their way upwards.

Others may stay in place once they reach their topmost rung because they like the community and want to stay; others stay because they have been promoted outside their level of competence and have nowhere left to go. There they act as an anchor on the entire organization, making change, growth and innovation more difficult.

It’s difficult to decide who will best fill such an important role as CAO. Sometimes the apparent best choice in an interview turns out to be unsuited for their new position only after they have settled in; fulfilling the Peter Principle.

In the Forbes Magazine article, Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives, author Eric Jackson identifies:

Leaders who are invariably crisp and decisive tend to settle issues so quickly they have no opportunity to grasp the ramifications. Worse, because these leaders need to feel they have all the answers, they aren’t open to learning new ones.

Apparent decisiveness, he suggests, can mask a myopic, self-centred viewpoint. 

Jackson also lambastes, those who “ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn’t completely behind them”:

…CEOs who think their job is to instill belief in their vision also think that it is their job to get everyone to buy into it. Anyone who doesn’t rally to the cause is undermining the vision. Hesitant managers have a choice: Get with the plan or leave.

The problem with this approach is that it’s both unnecessary and destructive. CEOs don’t need to have everyone unanimously endorse their vision to have it carried out successfully. In fact, by eliminating all dissenting and contrasting viewpoints, destructive CEOs cut themselves off from their best chance of seeing and correcting problems as they arise.

I’;m sure you’ve known the “my way or the highway” types in your own past. I certainly have, and can list several companies that have ceased to exist because of this monolithic attitude.

For entrepreneurs and the Mitt Romney-CEOs, for the dog-eat-dog capitalism of corporate warfare, for those whose whose egos demand they be in control all by themselves and damn the underlings, this hierarchy seems the logical path to take because it can lead to ultimate, sole-sourced power.

A truly competent person may rise to the top in this environment, but there’s an equal chance that an incompetent person does – as Jackson’s article details.

This escalator-style corporate management model may not be the most appropriate for a municipality which should really be a cooperative, rather than competitive, environment. Municipalities have very different dynamics than private sector business.

 Ideally, every CAO or top-level manager should have a wide range of skills (as per enotes.com):

Regardless of organizational level, all managers must have five critical skills: technical skill, interpersonal skill, conceptual skill, diagnostic skill, and political skill.

However, it’s unlikely any single person has all of these in sufficient supply. Not to belittle anyone who has held that role, but these skills are big shoes to fill. While a good manager will delegate some responsibilities to those who have the complementary skills, it’s not easy to release the reins of power once you’ve been given them.

That’s where team management comes to the fore. A team can supplement each other’s weaknesses by providing a mix of skills, talents, and personalities to strengthen the group: a gestalt, where the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts.  As also noted on enotes.com:

A team is a group of individuals with complementary skills who work together to achieve a common goal. That is, each team member has different capabilities, yet they collaborate to perform tasks. Many organizations are now using teams more frequently to accomplish work because they may be capable of performing at a level higher than that of individual employees. Additionally, teams tend to be more successful when tasks require speed, innovation, integration of functions, and a complex and rapidly changing environment.

Another type of managerial position in an organization that uses teams is the team leader, who is sometimes called a project manager, a program manager, or task force leader. This person manages the team by acting as a facilitator and catalyst. He or she may also engage in work to help accomplish the team’s goals. Some teams do not have leaders, but instead are self-managed. Members of self-managed teams hold each other accountable for the team’s goals and manage one another without the presence of a specific leader.

This is like the model Collingwood has taken and, in the months since we implemented it, it has proven far more successful than anyone imagined. To be clear: the position of CAO is technically not vacant: Council appointed Mr. Ed Houghton in April as Acting CAO (he currently does so without any additional remuneration, by the way). However, he serves as the team leader, the catalyst, rather than the overlord.

Others on the executive team include the town’s treasurer (Ms. Leonard), our clerk (Ms. Almas), and the Collus Director of Operations (Mr. Irwin). These four people pool a considerable wealth of experience, talent and perspectives.

Teams are essentially mutually-supportive, multi-tasking units, whose members have the ability to deal with multiple issues and activities simultaneously, yet work on collective goals. The group approach parallels current social trends being played out online, in social media. As Luc Galoppin writes:

Successful organizations are those who are aware of that shift and tap into the new literacy of collaboration that social media has brought us. The result is a new balance between hierarchy and community that is called social architecture… We still need hierarchy and control to get things done. The only difference with the old days is that control will only get you half-way. The Industrial Revolution is over. Today, getting things done requires an extra layer on top of hierarchy. We need to re-wire our organizations and tap into the potential of communities, tribes, movements, problems and solutions. Each of these communities wants to be hosted. And you need those communities to get results in today’s economy.

Netage.comGaloppin makes some salient points about the shift from the traditional hierarchy to a more community- or tribe-based based management, one in which influence and collaboration replace the old “command-and-control” structures. In that sense, Collingwood is ahead of the curve because we have already moved beyond the traditional, but often fragile, hierarchical models.

What we have done is de-layer the old hierarchy and empower the middle-level management. In doing so, it seems a traditional CAO position is proving to be a redundant level of management and unnecessary bureaucracy we can afford to eschew. We have one less level in the decision-making process, but more decision makers. And yet our expenses are lower.
Department of Redundancy Department
In a study of delayering management practices, P. Kettley wrote,

Central to the new model of organisation in the 1990s is a flatter structure, achieved by a reduction in the number of layers in the management hierarchy. Such a structure is becoming synonymous in popular management theory with bureaucracy busting, faster decision making, shorter communication paths, stimulating local innovation and a high involvement style of management…

For some, the achievement of such savings is the primary objective of their restructuring initiative. For others, a flatter structure is the route to freedom from bureaucracy, speedier communication and the development of a customer focused culture in which team working and high involvement working practices will thrive.

A flatter organisation is achieved in several ways. First, by the elimination or automation of management activities and the subsequent redundancy of those posts performing them. Second, as the result of unnecessary and costly overlaps of accountability being identified and reallocated.

Whether or not this will continue to be the model for town management, I can’t say. I can only observe that it has proven itself in the short time we have operated with it and I would be hesitant to vote to return to the older, less collaborative and certainly more expensive model with a CAO alone at the top of the pyramid.

Council has also expressed its collective support for this inclusive, team-management, collaborative approach. Town hall is functioning better and more smoothly than I’ve ever seen it in 20 years. Staff morale is high and the relationship between Mr. Houghton’s team and council is excellent. There is no need to go to the expense or effort to fill the role with an outsider.

~~~~~

* As for the group’s unrealistic demand that outsiders determine staff requirements, the right to appoint or dismiss senior staff rests solely with the elected council. Under the requirements of the Municipal Act, personnel issues cannot even be discussed with those who are not authorized by the legislation. The Municipal Act does not allow a group of unelected citizens to control the actions of elected representatives or staff with regard to hiring personnel or to determine staffing levels.

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