How Municipalities Work:

In Ontario, Municipalities are “corporations”. They exist at the will of the Province. Their operating rules are described in the Ontario Municipal Act. They have:  1) stockholders / taxpayers / voting citizens, 2) CEO (Mayor), 3) Executive Board of Directors (Councillors), 4) a Clerk to keep records, 5) a Chief Financial Officer to keep track of the money, 6) a Fire Chief. Everyone else is optional, hired at the will of Council.

Voters tell the Council what they want by:

  • telling candidates what they want during elections,
  • calling and emailing the Mayor and Councillors,
  • appearing at Council meetings as presenters and delegations,
  • telling Council what its goals and aspirations are during eth strategic plan review process.

There are critical processes and reports that are required to keep the Council and voters aware of what is happening:

  • Reports to Council (and citizens) in public session,
    • Rules of Procedure re. who can speak, when, about what at Council meetings [Conclusions / Opinion: the rules presently hinder rather than facilitate citizen participation.]
  • the Strategic Plan, work plans and required reports to Council and public, [Conclusions / Opinion: the present Strategic Plan lacks fulsome accountability and no enforcement mechanisms for non-compliance by staff.]
  • the Budget. [Conclusions / Opinion: no argument with the numbers, but the authorities and powers described in the budget are not in compliance with the Ontatio Municipal Act.]

Click on the red titles above to take you to web pages where I explain the webmaster’s conclusions / opinion!

Strategic Planning

In the sections below I will be sharing my observations and conclusions about the Wilmot Township Strategic Plan as follows:

You can continue to scroll down and read each item in this long rolling page, or you can click on a hi-lighted title above which will take you to a page with just that topic described.

Why?

An election is when citizens/taxpayers/corporation shareholders/voters get their opportunity to tell the previous Councillors what they thought of them and to tell the next slate of “officers” / Councillors what they need and want them to do to represent their interests.

When a new Council takes office, it must be aware that the past weighs heavily upon them. The administration officials remain. They are “holdovers” from the era of the previous Council, and often have their preferences for ‘what was in the past’, to ‘continue in the present’ and ‘into the future’. These biases can be a drag on changes needed to be made by the Council as they were told by voters.

“The past informs the present and predicts the future.” [John Turturro]

“The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour.” [psychologist B.F. Skinner & Mark Twain]

A “new start” plan

The Corporation of the Township of Wilmot is undergoing a review of its strategic plan. This is usually a process undertaken immediately after an election and is completed within 6 months. It is an opportunity for the corporation’s shareholders/taxpayers to provide detailed instructions to the Council regarding changes in its operational goals, actions, timelines and ‘accountability’ processes as a corporation. The last election put its new Council in place on November 15, 2022. That means the review of the strategic plan should have been initiated immediately by the CAO, the process defined by the Council and the review completed by March or April of 2023. As of September 2024, the process was still underway and community “focus groups” are not expected until the fall of 2024.

Why an Outside Contractor?

The CAO did not initiate the process promptly. The CAO did not conduct the process in-house using staff paid for by taxpayers. In the CAO’s office, there are 6 FTE (full-time equivalent people, working 35 hours per week). 1) CAO = $222,374, 2) Executive Assistant to the CAO = ($75,349 to $91,554), 3) Human Resources Assistant, 4) Manager of Communications and Strategic Initiatives, 5) Manager of Human Resources/Health and Safety, and one other. There are 2.0 positions whose jobs are described in the O.M.A. (Ontario Municipal Act) as follows: “…who shall be responsible for. (a) Exercising general control and management of the affairs of the municipality for the purpose of ensuring the efficient and effective operation of the municipality, and (b) Performing such other duties as are assigned by the municipality.” (Council) In other words, it’s their job to do this stuff. Plus, there is a 1.0 FTE whose job is specifically to do this strategic planning – Manager of Communications and Strategic Initiatives.

Instead, the CAO wrote and issued an RFP (Request for Proposal) with a budget maximum of $50,000, to hire an outside consultant to do this job. Linton Consultants won the contract with a bid of $39,600 + travel + taxes = $46,104. It appears that the Corporation’s shareholders (taxpayers)  have 3.0 employees at Castle Kilbride being paid just under $300,000 per year, and another $46,104 goes to a private consultant as well.

This is one example, I conclude based on documents I accessed, where the new Council was led by the CAO’s office to spend money on something that it appears could and should (in one taxpayer’s opinion) have been done in-house. At the January 25, 2024, Finance and Budget Committee meeting, the Council approved a motion instructing staff to bring a peport with options that include the possibility of bringing the Strategic Plan in-house to reduce the cost and the possibility of deffering the strategic Plan to the 2025 Budget.

On February 15, 2024, the CAO submitted a report to Council in response to this direction. The CAO’s discussion of this option outlined reasons why this administrative task could NOT be done in-house: 2024.02.15.CAO>StrategicPlanning

  • “some larger municipalities . . . have a dedicated in-house project lead and the support of a significant number of staff to manage and complete the work”
  • other municipalities “prefer to use an outside expert for the stakeholder/community engagement piece and sometimes for the best-practice research portion”
  • “smaller municipalities are typically doing a ‘refresh’ of the existing strategic plan”
  • “Due to the full turnover on Council and change in Senior Leadership (sic), and also in anticipation of significant community growth, it may be appropriate to develop a new strategic plan”
  • “The Township requires additional internal resources to lead and support the Strategic plan exclusively in-house”

Another observation of reality in Wilmot is:

  • It is normal that there be complete turnover in Councillors after an election. How many ‘new’ Councillors there are has no impact on the need to go out-of-house for planning. That’s a responsibility of every Council to provide leadership, and administation staff to implement.
  • The “stakeholder/community engagement piece” does not require large numbers of personnel to execute.
  • The winner of the bid to complete the 2024- 2027 Strategic plan, Linton Consulting services, has 2 partners and 3 staff conducting several Strategic Plan reviews in several municipalities, simultaneously. (Not possible to do one review in-house in Wilmot?)
  • When the webmaster asked Kelly Linton for 1 hour of their time to make a presentation regarding suggested improvements to the Strategic Plan, he ‘deferred indefinitely’, and led me to conclude that he did not want to meet with individual citizens ‘unscripted’. His response on July 25, 2024, was,
  • “Hi Barry. I am on vacation for the next two weeks.
    Since you have FOIed my proposal, you’ll know that my methodology included 1 on 1 and group sessions with management and members of council, an online community questionnaire, a staff questionnaire, and community focus group sessions.
    If you want to send me anything, feel free.” [Note: I don’t just “mail-it-in” as my standard for completing a task. Professionals who do that get fired!]
  • The winning bid costs $46,104 including travel and HST. Each household pays $5.72 for the outdide contractor.
  • Wilmot Township has 6.0 FTE in the CAO’s Office: CAO, Executive Assistant to the CAO, Manager of Communications and Strategic Initiatives, Manager of Human Resources/Health and Safety, Human Resources Assistant, a clerical person. There is a full-time employee dedicated to Strategic Initiatives. What do these people do for 35 hours a week of flex-time work?
  • The CAO’s salary in 2023 was $222,374. Each household in Wilmot pays $27.59 for the CAO’s salary, or $9.88 per person (22,500 in Wilmot).
  • The CAO’s exec. Assistant’s salary was $75,349 to $91,554.00. The total CAO’s Office staffing cost in 2023 was $815,565.00, which is 3.0% of the total Wilmot Budget.
  • There are 8,059 households in Wilmot. Each household contributes $104.54 for staffing the CAO’s Office.

Why does any CAO’s Office, aywhere in the Province, hire an outside contractor instead of using existing inhouse staff?

  • OPINION: It might be, that when an RFP is written, it describes what they want the contractor to tell them (“Here’s the answers I want, write it up in pretty anguage and send it back to me?) You can read Wilmot’s RFP, by clicking on, the RFP for a Wilmot Strategic Plan.
  • OPINION: It might be that a CAO’s Office wants “cover”. The CAO’s Office can blame someone else if things don’t go well?
  • OPINION: It might be because folks tend to think that they do not have the best qualified staff in-house, and an “expert” only exists outside an organization, and the farther away they come from, the more expert they must be?
  • OPINION: It might be because a CAO in a Municipality just doesn’t want to do a job that some might describe as being part of their paid duties?
  • Maybe you have your own opinion?

What is Linton’s “Approach & Methodology”?

[Click on the heading/tile above for content.]

What is Linton’s “Schedule / Work Plan”?

[Click on the heading/tile above for content.]

Existing Strategic Plan

There is a Strategic Plan in place in Wilmot Township. In fact, on the Township’s website, one can find at least three versions of the Strategic Plan. I guess you can just pick whichever one you think may be the one guiding the Corporation at this time. [Click on the headings/tiles below for content.]

Township of Wilmot Strategic Plan, Council Approved – June 3, 2013

Township of Wilmot Strategic Plan Update 2019 – 2023

Township of Wilmot Strategic Plan 2020 Update

Concerns in existing Strategic Plan (and 2024 Budget)

Webmaster’s suggested solutions – an amended/updated version.