"Cowardice asks the question...is it safe? Expediency asks the question...is it politic? Vanity asks the question...is it popular? But conscience asks the question...is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because it is right." ~Dr. Martin Luther King

Thursday 9 February 2012

Partly Correct.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Four Years Is Too Long":

"He received $40,000 from the town before the contract was terminated by the new council."

Didn't he actually resign before you got the chance to give him the push?

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His contract called for a month's notice to terminate. Plenty of indication was given. .He took full advantage of the time and submitted his letter to coincide with  the notice. He didn't miss a penny

It was as easy a forty thou as he is ever likely to earn. He was appointed Integrity Commissioner to Richmond Hill Council after that.
I heard about a Richmond Hill Councillor buying golf clubs with his expense account .never heard if that was a  Code of Conduct complaint.

Our new Council wasn't  too swift either.

We took our Oath of Office on December 1st. We had been elected since October. The former Mayor had been active since her defeat. She was in the office until the last day.A lease with the Department of National Defence was amended   in November.  Again without Council being aware or authorisation.

An accepted  process  followed is for a sitting board to continue until the new board takes office.

 A Council  does not  take office until the Oath of Office is sworn. The norm is ceremonial occasion and organized to take place early in December. It never happens on the 1st of December. It was a precaution.

It did that year. Councillors attended individually to swear the Oath of Office. A  special meeting could and should, in my opinion,  have been called for December 3rd to deal with  the legal contract with the ex-Mayor's lawyer and give notice to the Integrity Commissioner.

We missed the boat on that and it cost us several thousand dollars extra.

We paid a lawyer to tell us that we needed to pay the GD legal fees. That cost us an extra $8.500. We immediately fell into the practice of using lawyers to tell us what decisions to make.

The money we spend on consultants and lawyers makes my blood curdle.

It's one of those changes I keep being reminded of. Milksop politicians who need to be advised every step of the way.  Tell me that's an improvement . Yeah, right. 

We  extended the budget process substantially to allow lobbyists and petitioners to come  meetings and repeat their spiels of why we should hand over tax revenues to this and that group who have created their own employment with phoney- baloney schemes of the new religion of "conservation".

Councillors even attend  upon them to listen to their blandishments and be persuaded to give away money that isn't theirs to give, to people without accountability so that they can be the good guys to this group of voters and that..

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We are always talking about how much money the Mormac legal fees have cost/are costing the Town. Does anyone know how they came to use that Toronto firm that charges so much per hour ? To put it into perspective, they charge about twice what a younger more up-to-date firm might charge and the results were abysmal. Mayor Grossi also reached out to Toronto and that firm failed to save his case from the shredder.
Just asking.

Anonymous said...

"We took our Oath of Office on December 1st. We had been elected since October. The former Mayor had been active since her defeat. She was in the office until the last day.A lease with the Department of National Defence was amended in November. Again without Council being aware or authorisation."

Okay - can you clear something up? Not withstanding that the above statement has nothing to do with the IC....

If the council that was elected in October (let's be fair, it was LATE October) does not assume power until the end of the previous term and then sworn in, how is the former Mayor's actions regading the DND contract unlawful? There is no requirement in the MA that says the amendments had to be ratified by council. The Mayor as CEO can make the amendments.