Incompetent or Malicious?

If you happened to peruse the Classified section of the February 10, 2011 edition of the Almaguin News you might have noticed that the Town of Kearney is looking to hire a Chief Building Officer (CBO). This follows a resolution tabled by Mayor Paul Tomlinson at the January 28th council meeting.

Tomlinson has screwed up here in several ways:

• First, Tomlinson told council (and about 50 members of the public) “it’s the law” that the town advertise the position of CBO whenever the term of contract expires. This is a lot of hooey. Kearney has always shared CBO services with Perry Township and it is allowable under the Procurement By-Law to just renew the contact. Tomlinson either doesn’t know what he’s talking about or he’s deliberately misleading council and the public.
• Next, Tomlinson should have discussed this in a “closed session” as protocol requires. You don't discuss staffing issues in a public session and Tomlinson knows it. But, Tomlinson has an aversion to closed sessions, because the Ombudsman’s Office has been scrutinizing Tomlinson’s abuse of the process and continues to monitor him. (Remember those secret meetings a while back?) Now he just circumvents proper procedure to keep the Ombudsman off his back.
• And Tomlinson slapped Mayor Dunn of Perry Township in the face by failing to discuss the tender before going public. Kearney and Perry share the CBO and it would have been just common courtesy to let Mayor Dunn know what was going on instead of letting him read about it in the newspaper.
• Currently CBO services cost Kearney about $30,000 to 35,000 a year. Hiring its own CBO would cost Kearney tax-payers about double that (CBO’s are high-demand and don’t work part-time. At least not ones that are any good). Tomlinson says he plans to enter into an agreement with a neighbouring township thereby splitting the cost. But the only neighbouring township that qualifies for sharing the cost is Perry Township and Tomlinson has just burned that bridge. Why would Mayor Dunn want to set himself up to be burned again? This means that Kearney will have to pay for a full-time CBO who will never have more than a part-time workload. Weren’t the Proudfoot Four screaming about over-staffing not too long ago?

Proudfoot fiscal responsibility in action once again.

Or are we starting to see some of that payback Tomlinson has been planning against staff who filed harassment complaints against him last term? Incompetence or malicious intent… Either way:

Are you surprised?