{"id":16240,"date":"2016-03-08T16:42:39","date_gmt":"2016-03-08T21:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/?p=16240"},"modified":"2016-03-08T16:42:39","modified_gmt":"2016-03-08T21:42:39","slug":"but-wait-it-gets-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/but-wait-it-gets-worse\/","title":{"rendered":"But wait, it gets worse…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"If<\/a>By now you know the worst thing that has happened<\/strong>\u00a0during this term of council: last night, Dep. Mayor Saunderson made a notice of motion to extend the interim CAO’s contract for another year. Yes, the same interim CAO who was originally hired\u00a0to fill in only until\u00a0the town hired a permanent CAO. Last year.<\/p>\n

It appears several councillors have been conniving in secret AGAIN to extend the CAO’s contact, just as they did last year. Perhaps it\u00a0was discussed at the secret meeting at a\u00a0Thornbury restaurant, last December.<\/p>\n

No wonder the recruitment process for a new CAO was\u00a0delayed.\u00a0It was supposed to start in January, then inexplicably\u00a0got\u00a0delayed\u00a0until March. The recruitment expenses\u00a0were even included in last week’s budget. April Fool!<\/p>\n

Now we know why: councillors have again been doing their sly backroom deals to extend the current “interim” CAO’s contract for a second time. And the Dep. Mayor didn’t even show the basic, professional courtesy to tell the mayor he intended to make a notice of motion. Process and\u00a0protocol\u00a0are\u00a0for losers, right?<\/p>\n

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Instead of saving taxpayers $50-75,000 a year, and giving town staff’s allegedly low morale a chance to recover, council will extend the contract of arguably one of the most unpopular persons in this town’s administration.<\/p>\n

The previous CAO made $153,000<\/a>. The current interim CAO\u00a0gets $225,000<\/a>\u00a0plus a car. That’s significantly<\/em> more than any other community our size, including all of our neighbouring municipalities. We could have saved as much as $150,000 by hiring\u00a0a new, permanent CAO. Instead,\u00a0council is going to add another $75,000 to the cost: almost a quarter of a million dollars. For what gain?<\/p>\n

The DM told council\u00a0he wanted to extend the contract because there were still things for the CAO to finish. But wouldn’t an efficient administrator be able to wrap up everything outstanding in the remaining six months of his contract? What is it that requires 18<\/em> months to complete that a new CAO couldn’t just as effectively deal with?\u00a0A\u00a0new CAO would also be\u00a0invested in his or her\u00a0career\u00a0and\u00a0would live here full time.<\/p>\n

That money could instead have been used to purchase new docks, pay for the waterfront master plan, fix roads, clear sidewalks, fund children’s programs at the library and our rec centres, fund festivals and social events, create another dog park – any number of things that would benefit the whole community. But such petty\u00a0things don’t concern council.<\/p>\n

And who knows? Will they extend the contract after that for yet another year? Probably. Why should they care about how your tax dollars are spent?<\/p>\n

And that doesn’t include more than $100,000 in the fees already paid to consultants and lawyers the CAO\u00a0has hired the past year, whose in-camera reports fuel\u00a0council’s relentless assaults on our utility services and their staff, the secret sale of the airport, the secret sale of our our hydro utility, the sale of our rail line and other assets. Will he\u00a0spend another $100,000 of your tax dollars in the coming\u00a0year on more<\/em> consultants and lawyers? After all, money grows on trees, right?<\/p>\n

We’ve already lost several top staff members this term – experienced staffers who were provincially respected and honoured. How many more will leave? How many more good people will chose to flee Collingwood for greener pastures and better working conditions?<\/p>\n

All of this has been done without any<\/em> sort of public input, or discussion. It wasn’t even raised during the recent budget discussions – even though it will affect the budget. It’s all been done in conniving secrecy.<\/p>\n

How open and transparent.<\/p>\n

It is very sad day for this town, and a worse one for local democracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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By now you know the worst thing that has happened\u00a0during this term of council: last night, Dep. Mayor Saunderson made a notice of motion to extend the interim CAO’s contract for another year. Yes, the same interim CAO who was originally hired\u00a0to fill in only until\u00a0the town hired a permanent CAO. Last year. It appears several councillors have been conniving in secret AGAIN to extend the CAO’s contact, just as they did last year. Perhaps it\u00a0was discussed at the secret meeting at a\u00a0Thornbury restaurant, last December. No wonder the recruitment process for a new CAO was\u00a0delayed.\u00a0It was supposed to start \u2026…… click below for more \u2193<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,537,546],"tags":[618,140,130],"class_list":["post-16240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collingwood","category-council","category-ethics-and-behaviour","tag-collingwood","tag-council","tag-ethics"],"a3_pvc":{"activated":true,"total_views":6744,"today_views":0},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16240"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16250,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16240\/revisions\/16250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}