CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. — The chairman of Charlottetown’s council advisory committee says Mayor Philip Brown can take one thing off his to-do list — an organizational review of city administration.
Coun. Terry MacLeod was responding to comments Brown made in an interview with The Guardian earlier this month in which the mayor noted that he still wants to see a review done, pointing out that Coun. Mitchell Tweel brought the matter up at a recent public meeting.
However, MacLeod said to his knowledge, there has never been any talk amongst councillors of doing such a review and if a review were done it would be on a departmental basis, not of the entire organization.
“There has never been any mention to my knowledge of an administrative review (but) there was talk of a departmental review if we felt that one department or another was kind of lacking. Then, we could do a review but that would go through (human resources), of course,’’ MacLeod said.
He added that one such review took place a few years ago that saw Scott Adams take over as manager of public works, a job that had been held by Paul Johnston.
“It seemed that Paul Johnston was too busy and that (the responsibilities at the top of) public works needed to be broken into two parts. It’s a full-time job just looking after contracts so that’s what Paul is doing now.’’
Adams, who has an engineering background, took over as manager.
When informed of MacLeod’s comments, Brown wondered why MacLeod was speaking to the issue, saying the issue doesn’t come under the terms of reference of the council advisory committee.
Brown said the matter falls under human resources.
MacLeod said he is qualified to speak on the issue considering that it’s the job of his committee to form the makeup of all of council’s standing committees, their terms of reference, qualifications and disqualifications, chairs, vice-chairs and members-at-large, all with the input of other councillors.
“I don’t know what his motivation for that was. Maybe he thought something was wrong (before he was elected mayor). It costs an awful lot of money to do these things. It might have been one of his election promises, I don’t know, but, at the end of the day, there have been no serious discussions about any administrative review.’’
- Coun. Terry MacLeod
“I don’t know what his motivation for that was. Maybe he thought something was wrong (before he was elected mayor),’’ MacLeod said, referring to the desire to have an administrative review done. “It costs an awful lot of money to do these things. It might have been one of his election promises, I don’t know, but, at the end of the day, there have been no serious discussions about any administrative review.’’
Tweel said he’s never asked for an organizational review.
Following the retirement of two long-time employees last year, including parkland conservationist Beth Hoar, Tweel said he simply wanted council to be involved in the process of hiring replacements.
“Before we brought in any replacements it would always come back to council first,’’ Tweel said. “That doesn’t happen anymore. I just want to look at the organizational chart and see if there are any gaps or discrepancies.’’