Delegation to Wilmot Council – March 3, 2025

Madam Chair I appreciate your understanding as I address the report before you tonight in the context of real-life events and the context of complementary policies and practices existent in the township.

Of course, at the end, I have recommended solutions to address the identified problems. Mayor, as chair, please advise me when I’m down to 2 ½ minutes so that I can skip down, as will be probably necessary, to my summary 17 recommendations. Folks can read the skipped parts online, as an attachment which I’ll submit to Kaitlin, or on my website www.thisiswilmot.ca

On July 5, 2021 a previous Wilmot Council ignored the input of its citizens and voted to shut down the Prime Ministers Path Project, and form a working group of citizens to tell council how to dispose of the statues. Over 75% of the citizens wanted a different decision. It was then when I asked myself, “How did it come to this?”,

“Why is council so out-of-touch with citizens’ desires?”,

“How are decisions made in this township?”,

“How is this Castle organized?”,

“Where is the internal power that is pushing council away from the political realities in Wilmot?”,

“Who controls the power over access to information, and knowledge and thus who controls the power to influence and control decisions?”

It turns out, after 3 ½ years of digging into township documents, that I came to the same conclusion as stated on page 3 of this report CAO-2025-05, “there were concerns with Corporate Culture as well as the operating structure”.

I have concluded that the concerns that citizens have with how this township makes decisions, and why they are for all eventualities ignored, is based on who has control over access to factually accurate information, and who controls who gets what information, when, why, and in what form.

My conclusion is that individual councillors and individual citizens got only what a series of CAOs have wanted to provide. There still exists a culture of secrecy. When a councillor asks for information, the answer is most often one of these; “I’ll take it under advisement and get back to you.”, [That’s a rabbit hole into which process disappears. I have an example later from the Strategic Plan presentation to council by Kelly Linton.] or “We don’t have the staff, or software capabilities to get that for you.” or, “Every municipality in Ontario wishes it had the capacity to provide that information.”, or “That will take hundreds of hours and many months to get back to you.” or “I take direction only from council as a body and you’ll have to pass a motion requesting that information.”

Excuse me? Who’s kidding whom? Plain and simple, to tax paying citizens, that’s insubordination by whiners.

Hired staff is paid 100% of their annual compensation by tax payers to produce 100% of the work required. There is not a farmer in any township who believes that he or she only has to perform for 35 hours a week and expect to be successful. Farmers and all other tax payers have no sympathy for a role that gets about $220,000 a year from them and then have to listen to excuses about why they can’t provide the organizational management skills and leadership down capabilities to get the job done. There is frustration that recent Councils have allowed this petulant whingeing to continue.

Staffing has increased faster than the population. There has been downloading onto municipalities but CAOs and Councils have failed to implement efficiencies such as software that is more effective than adding bodies and building larger edifices to hold them all.

Councils have allowed a series of CAOs, over multiple council terms, to take over the leadership, and have created a bureaucratic nightmare that multiple consultants have recognized and reported on. That’s what this report and the preceding series of consultants’ reports are supposed to address.

On the Titanic the ship-board stewards put extensive effort into adding and rearranging the deck chairs, yet the ship went down. It was a culture of engineering arrogance and captain ignorance that resulted in tragedy. No amount of adding, subtracting or reorganizing little coloured boxes on hierarchical flow charts will change this inappropriate corporate management culture in Wilmot.

Until council acts as a unified body to provide direction to its hired staff, council will continue to be a sycophantic body, dependant upon accepting written reports of what the CAO and staff want to do, when they want, and how they want.

Council must lead a change in practice and in culture:

+ by getting its act together. Find a legal strategy to go on retreat and work it out.

+by refusing to accept any report for council’s information only. All reports must be previewed and reviewed by Council, content must be analyzed for accuracy and appropriate consultations with citizens occur, before approval by council. All reports must have a caveat that staff will take no further action until directed by council.

+ by adopting a strong mayor format to break log jams within segments of council.

+ by hiring a CAO who can lead a change in corporate culture within the management staff, within an incremental timeline for stages of successful change, and who is not a graduate of the CAO training school, which produces folks who think they, not council and citizens, are in control of decision-making in a municipality.

+ in effect, by adopting practices available to it by the OMA, to provide the leadership direction to a CAO, and practices that require accountability reporting to council, that have supervisory practices on a timeline within any project’s implementation process, and change from written reports for information only that CAOs have deemed to be approved marching orders.

When citizens ask for information, they too are rebuffed. The practice of requiring citizens to pay for FOI requests and appeals to the information and privacy commissioner must change. The strategic plan mantra of “Open & Transparent” is, in reality cow patties. Secrecy is reality. Openness and transparency are only aspirational words on paper. Secrecy leads to suspicion, leads to frustration, leads to anger. Recent consultants’ reports and townhalls have confirmed the mess that this township has placed itself in.

It should not be any reassurance that Wilmot is not alone. A small township here in Florida tossed its CAO two weeks ago, and Strathroy-Caradoc did the same last week – the second time in four years. It appears that there is a lot of incompetence out there. It’s time for council to recognize that citizens will not passively accept insubordination and incompetence.

I too, as stated in this report, have concluded that there was, and still exist, major issues with a corporate culture modelled at the very top, such that staff down the line appear to try to “keep their heads down” and “go along to get along”.

I have had interactions with numerous line staff and have found them to be well-informed, personable, as forthright in sharing information as their hierarchical role, within the corporate culture, permits, and are willing to provide suggestions for where else to find information.

However, there is a choke valve on information access at the top. This is where the “concerns with Corporate Culture” originate – in the CAO’s office. This concern is not limited to any one individual. 3 of the last 4 CAOs have had a chokehold on sharing information and councils and citizens have been frustrated in changing the culture and decision-making process.

This inappropriate “corporate culture” has been identified in several outside consultants’ reports, such as the Strategic Plan Review report, the Corporate Communication and Community Consultation Strategy Review report, and now for the Whitesell & Co. Organizational Structural Review report.

It is a culture of secrecy. Information is closely held and access to it is restricted by the CAOs office. Information is sucked into a black hole where it cannot be communicated to councillors or citizens unless the CAO approves its release – and then only in minimal amounts and often in misleading wording.

These consultants’ reports considered events over multiple councils. A change in council members did not change the fundamental concerns. Citizens’ deep mistrust is founded on an administration, corporate culture problem. When citizens are not given opportunities to be meaningfully heard, when information essential to understanding events and making decisions is withheld from citizens, and then also withheld from councillors – because the CAOs office believes that council only gets the same information as citizens, which is basically nothing of consequence – then distrust, frustration and anger results. Citizens blame council for being unable to control and direct its own hired staff, and get booted out of office with no net positive change in the corporate culture.

The powers given by the OMA to council to lead, and all hired management roles to “report to / be accountable to” council has been upended in Wilmot. My conclusion is that over a series of weak councils, the power vacuum has been usurped by CAOs who have misinterpreted the meaning of “report to”. Instead of “reporting to council in a supervisory/accountability relationship – that is by sharing information, allowing councillors time to confirm its accuracy, to consult with citizens etc. as appropriate, by waiting for council to provide direction or specific “marching orders” clarifications regarding an implementation process, and finally for a council vote of approval – CAOs have bypassed the supervisory and approval stages. CAOs have submitted written “reports” for the information of council only. They then have assumed that written report as received by council as “approval” to implement a project as he or she sees fit.

This report is just one example of reports that were initially presented to council, for information only, and then disappeared into a blackhole. Two CAOs have presented an “update” document and then just gone off and implemented it spending money on consultants, using line staff time, etc. creating budget issues over renovating this Castle for 23 more employees – all without approval by council. When citizens are given a draft budget, and then become aware that in the near future senior administration wants to hire 23 more employees, and renovate a building at a cost of $1million+ – in 2024 dollars – and all of these actions have been taken by senior staff based on a report in 2022, that was never approved by council, then, “Wilmot, we have a problem!” We have angry townhall meetings. We have a corporate culture problem.

This report is, at its foundation, an organizational structure report about who controls how decisions are made in Wilmot. He who controls the flow of information controls knowledge. He who controls knowledge has power. This report is telling council to approve how the power structure is hierarchically organized and thus, when combined with other reports, determines who has the power to control who has access to what information and when.

The senior administration has a proven pattern of submitting reports, “for the information of council only” in isolation. There is no planned sequence, on a specified timeline for when written report for information are presented to council. They appear on council’s own agenda apparently out of this air and council is made to feel that they must respond to them – often with a perceived urgency. Artificial urgency leads to bad decision-making. This is bad management and council is responsible for allowing this to happen and to continue.

When reports are considered in isolation it is easy for councillors and a reasonable observing citizen to become misdirected from what the cumulative effect is upon decision-making when several reports are combined in reality. Nothing exists in isolation, and this report needs to be considered in the cumulative context of other reports and policies.

For examples: the proposed Council-Staff Relations Policy, the 2021 Job Description of the CAO, and the Council Meeting Procedural By-Law which describes how council’s own meetings’ agendas are produced under the authority of the CAOs office, all create a situation where control over information, control of knowledge results in power over decision-making into the arbitrary hands of one person, a CAO.

In effect, this report is telling council to approve a hierarchical structure that, in combination with other reports and existing policies, gives largely unfettered powers to a CAO to control access to information and thus power over decision-making.

The integrity of a decision-making process depends upon:

+ complete, accurate information being freely available to all participants, staff, councillors, citizens.

+ decision makers who have the requisite skills / characteristics to create and practice accurate fact gathering, synthesis and analysis of factual information.

+ management skills to empower confident, competent performance by staff.

+ respect for the chain of command which is leadership down by council to administration staff via a CAO, leadership down to staff by a CAO.

+ respect for the chain of command through reporting practices that are comprehensive, that schedule all projects, tasks, and activities on a multi-year timeline available to all staff, councillors and citizens such as Monday.com software for example.

+ all information not protected by legislation is freely available in a timely manner to councillors and citizens.

+ administration leadership that is honest, transparent, accurate, fulsome, respectful of their accountability to council and residents/tax payers.

+ procedures and practices that facilitate input from all citizens to councillors and staff (software on website).

+ procedures and practices that report (accountability) activities of staff to citizens (software on website).

The recently revised strategic Plan contains a lot of aspirational wording about informed decisions, open & transparent communications, working together – similar to the previous versions – but is there a match between the talk and the walk?

How successful is the township in achieving these benchmarks? The recent Prime Ministers Path report, the Strategic Plan input, the Corporate Communication and Community Engagement Strategy report, all concluded that failures existed and suggestions for correction were made.

All these reports indicated that the communication of accurate, complete information between citizens and corporate staff and council was unsatisfactory. There are over 22,000 residents in Wilmot, and a significant proportion of them have personal examples of this failure to communicate.

A CAO in Wilmot gets paid about $220,000 dollars for a year’s work and, so far, haven’t proven able to get it done. We need a different job description for the CAO. The CAO role is a coordinator, a facilitator, a leader DOWN. The recent CAOs have defined the role as that of “the top executive position in the corporation”. That is false. The top executive position is held by the mayor. The CAO is the top general management position in the administration staff. That’s it. Report up. Report out. No leadership up! No leadership out!

A phone call or email request didn’t work. [“I get 40 emails an hour. I can’t reply to all of them!” Maybe that’s because the organizational structure is CAO centric and all information is filtered through the choke-hold of one person so that only what the CAO arbitrarily chooses to address gets action? The role of the CAO needs to be redefined so that one person has less power to filter information and control decision-making?]

In 2015 the township signed a legally binding contract with Createscape Waterloo whereby the arts group would provide a series of statues for a commemorative project in the township, and the township would produce an educational component to complement the statues in situ. The educational component was critical, it was essential to the success of the entire project.

The CAO did not do his job and the educational component never saw the light of day. As a result, the project had no roots in the community and it was easy pickings as a convenient target by any group that had some historic grievance with the federal government.

A CAO failed, over a course of 6 years, to fulfill the task assigned and vehement anger resulted.

Personally, I have 8 examples of a “failure to communicate” and a failure to provide promised documentation and a failure to perform duties. I’ll only touch a couple here tonight. The rest will be in my official correspondence to Kaitlin for attachment to the minutes, and published on my website www.thisiswilmot.ca

Simply asking did not produce answers, so I have now adopted the practice of submitting formal FOI requests at a cost of $5 each when I’m seeking information.

1. In 2021 I asked the clerk for the costs for storage of the PMP statues, the cost of video cameras and other security improvements. She refused.
2. After that clerk left, I asked Arthur for the same information. He provided it quickly.
3. I asked for the annual work plans for the PMP project as were required in the previous strategic Plan. The obscure online reports provided were useless as they were just MS Word charts of stagnant data that was so vague as to be of no function. There was only 1 department’s chart provided of all departments for all of 2024, and it was generic, not descriptive. I concluded that either senior staff do not know what is happening in their own departments, aren’t required to provide the information as required in the Strategic Plan, or won’t share it. That’s a CAO performance issue.
4. The previous Strategic Plan required that the CAO provide, to council in public session and citizens on the website, an annual report of the administration’s progress toward meeting all the goals described for all the tasks and activities in the Strategic Plan. I asked for copies of each annual report by the CAO from 2022 to 2024. The answer was, and I quote, “Despite a thorough and reasonable search staff have been unable to locate any records related to your request. Access, therefore, cannot be granted as the records do not exist.” The official answer was that the CAOs did not perform a required task described in the Strategic Plan’s accountability section, #7. This may explain why the present strategic plan has no accountability requirements. (Oh, and it doesn’t have Vision or Mission statements either.)
5. At the October 21, 2024 Council Meeting, Linton Consulting made a verbal report to council. It included the fact that, “we came up with 6 core values. I’m not going to read them out. … So really those are the core values that the team came up with. I think they’re very inspirational” The citizens had no opportunity to provide input on what the core values of their township might be – and they were imposed from the top down. This is an organizational failure when the citizens values are dictated to them by a clique. During the Q & A, Councillor Dunstall asked,

“Kelly, I was just wondering, did you keep track of the demographic? You did? Was, do you have that? I would just be interested to know what that demographic looked like.”

The response from Kelly Linton was, “Yeah, it’s in the final report, so let me turn it up for a second. Is there any appendices? Um…No, no, I gotta get out. Oh, no, maybe I didn’t pull it out for this. Yeah, no, I don’t have it off the top of my head. I can, I can, I’ll have it by the time you do your staff, when you do your staff report, I’ll have it by then. Yeah, I noticed it is interesting for sure. I’ll have it by then.”

Did the CAO follow up and get that demographic analysis from the contracted consultant? Did the CAO provide that demographic analysis report to any of you and to the citizens? The public record indicated that such a report was forthcoming and we are still waiting for it.

Why doesn’t the public or council have it? The reason is because the survey format used by Linton consultants did not ask for any demographic data from respondents, and it was impossible for him to give you any analysis. The foundational demographic data, required to permit an analysis, did not exist in the first place.

The survey structure was flawed in its structure and produced invalid data. He lied to council and the public.

Why has the CAO not conveyed the fact that no report demographically validating the survey data is possible? Theoretically, all that data from 626 respondents could have been submitted by a ‘bot’ in Nicaragua, or one person accessing the URL link via multiple router IDs (the IP address – Internet protocal address) in Tim Hortons, MacDonalds, etc. The survey monkey app. only recognized the location of the server ID (IP adress) of the device used, not the demographic info. for the user of the device – because it was never gathered.

Council needs to keep a closer eye on which consultants are used, the validity of the techniques to be used, and monitoring progress along each step of a consultation’s phases. Senior administration is not providing sufficient supervision, so council must put practices and accountabilities in place to ensure that tax payers’ money actually provides valid data and decision outcomes.

6. Kelly Linton held a town hall style meeting at the St. Agatha community centre, and at that meeting reported that, based on input from council and staff, there was a recognition that there was a need to “achieve common ground among Council and staff and to build momentum for positive change”. In the final version of his report, Section 2.1, page 10, after being scrutinized, sanitized, and approved by the CAOs office, the reference to finding common ground remains, but staff is missing.

The intent of the original deliberations as reported got changed between that meeting in St. Agatha and the report going to council and the public.

I submitted an FOI request for copies of the bi-weekly project updates, the meeting checkpoint reports and a copy of the report as submitted by the consultant to the CAO before he scrutinized, sanitized and approved it for council. Request refused, as an ongoing pattern of getting information from this township’s administration.

Another $25 and an appeal to the i.p.c in Toronto. As of the last week of February the bi-weekly reports were provided, but the report as submitted by Kelly Linton to the CAO was still not provided. All I got was a copy of the nicely coloured document that council saw after it had been sanitized by the CAO.

So, who changed responsibility for finding common ground in decision-making from a joint responsibility of council AND staff, to dumping blame only onto council cannot be determined because the township still is refusing to provide the documentation. There is a pattern here that leads me to join many others in this township to not trust this administration.

7. On November 4, 2024, report COR-2024-28 about hiring a CAO was presented to Council to be “received for information” and to be approved 3 weeks later at the next council meeting. This would appear to a reasonable person to be an emergency decision to be made by council.

The report’s content was prepared, reviewed and presented by one and the same person – no checks-and-balances – just one person making it up and putting it on Council’s agenda without any context of importance in a full year’s work load at a time when all staff time probably should have been focussed on preparing a budget proposal including a 10-year capital plan forecast.

The senior administrator stated on page 4 of his report that, “The attached policy is consistent with comparators in its structure and content. The majority of comparators also include similar language related to complaints….” The administrator provided a list of 15 municipalities which he was using as evidence that his proposal was in line with others and thus had some credibility one might conclude.

I did a “municipal scan” using Google search to find the policies of the 15 comparators he presented as evidence. I found 4 policies on the web. They were not “consistent with those comparators in their structure and content.” My observation was that the administrator’s proposal was a cherry-picked compilation of the most extreme conditions that could be imposed by a CAO on a council and its citizens to formally gather all power over information into the arbitrary hands of one unelected person – a CAO.

In my opinion, the most egregious abuse of power was in the sentence, “Members of Council have the same rights of access to information as members of the community.” Based on my experiences with this township’s top arbitrator of information, that would mean that council would get mostly nothing unless they paid $30 for appeals, or only what a CAO whimsically may pontificate as valid data.

Assuming that there may be 11 other policies that he had used in his reference list, that may support his assertions, I submitted another FOI request for copies of the documents that he, as a municipal official, working out of Castle Kilbride must have had access to using his official municipal connections with other municipalities. I gave him the benefit of the doubt that he may have another source for getting the 15 municipal policies he used as proof.

This is the official answer I received from the township. “Despite a thorough and reasonable search, staff have been unable to located any records related to your request. Access, therefore, cannot be granted as the records do not exist.”

A CAO has submitted an official report, to be “received for information”, and the contents are deceptive. He has presented a 17-item summary of an 8-page Council-Staff Relations Policy, to be inserted into the Corporate Policy Manual, as the legal basis defining the relationship between the corporation’s hired staff, and council, and its relationship with its citizens / tax payers. Council and Wilmot’s citizens are being told that the rationale for a proposed legal document is based on evidence that does not exist in the township.

Does no one on Council carefully read this stuff? Does no one on Council check the accuracy of what they are being told? Does anyone on council know the meaning of the words, deceptive, dishonest, misleading, manipulative, gross misconduct, insubordination? Is council familiar with the phrase “termination for cause in Ontario”? Does council have access in closed session to legal counsel?

How many more examples does council need as evidence of causes of distrust by citizens in Wilmot?

8. The PMP project has another consultant going through the motions again. As background, to prepare me to contribute positively and accurately, I requested copies of the documents produced by township staff toward fulfilling the township’s contractual duty to provide an educational component to the original project from 2025. I asked for copies of contacts made seeking program materials, the promotional materials produced as reflected in the work plan reports, the educational materials produced. This would be a head start to the present consultation process for a basis of factual information in their deliberations.

The FOI request was refused as being frivolous, vexatious, submitted in bad faith as I was perceived as targeting the CAO for other reasons than access to the information. Of course I wanted it to use. Why would I ask for information just to put it in a file in a drawer, or set it on my mantle. I wanted to provide it to move the present working group forward.

The organizational structure of this township has the CAO in unilateral control of all information up and down and out to the public. One person has arbitrary power over who has access to what information – and that person is not elected by citizens who have a right to that information.

The irony is the response from senior administration was that I was acting in bad faith by seeking information from the one role who had sole hierarchical control over its access. This township has, in writing, accused me of acting in bad faith, belittled by integrity and questioned my personal credibility without any proof. This made a strong impression on me you can be sure.

Therefore, I paid $25 and submitted an appeal to the information and privacy commissioner in Toronto. The mediator in Toronto convinced the township to withdraw the frivolous and vexatious accusations, and to begin providing me the requested data as of December 16, 2024.

The consultations by the working group are almost over and no information. Therefore. On February 27, 2025, I submitted a “deemed refusal” appeal to the information and privacy commissioner because the township still had not complied. The fight for information is a perpetual battle.

The Strategic Plan has a core value of “Open & Transparent”, and includes the sentence, “We value integrity, equity, compassion, and transparency and will ensure that our actions reflect these values.” Horse pucks! A new CAO is needed to lead a culture change in the administration to put walk to the talk!

The existing organization structure puts the CAO as the single person who controls access to all information. The CAO determines:

+ what information is released to Council,

+ what is released to the public (and the Acting CAO indicated in a previous report to council that he believes that council should get only the same information as he chooses to release to the public),

+ when items appear on Council’s own agenda that the CAO controls,

+ whether one person (usually the CAO him or herself) prepares, reviews and submits any report,

+ what options for recommended action will appear in a report, even if all offered are not in alignment with what citizens told councillors during elections. In the example of the PMP, all of the CAO’s action recommendations were to “maintain the current direction” of cancelling the project entirely, and how to form a group to tell council how to get rid of the statues. None of these were in the mandate to councillors during the 2022 election. The CAO was deaf and blind to the political reality of what voters wanted.

This blatant use of assumed power is an organizational structure issue that must be amended by changing any arbitrary authorities granted by previous councils.

The O.M.A. states in section 224 that it is a municipality’s Council that:

1. b) develops and evaluates the policies and programs of the municipality,
2. d) ensures that administrative policies, practices and procedures and controllership policies, practices and procedures are in place to implement the decisions of council.
3. di) ensures the accountability and transparency of the operations of the municipality, including the activities of the senior management of the municipality.

The OMA requires that a municipal council must keep a close eye, constantly, on what is happening in the administration of its affairs. It’s the law. Its hired administration, from a CAO on down is accountable, every day, for its actions. The CAO is charged with providing leadership down to the administration staff, and reporting to council about everything – every bit of information, every bit of knowledge, every decision to be made.

That’s not how it works in Wilmot. The demand for this report occurred only after a lot of lobbying and hard questioning by citizens. The question, “How is this corporation organized and make decisions?” led to questions about what happened to the “Organizational Structure review and People Plan” report that was contracted for in 2022. A report came to council in a similar fashion as a lot of reports – “for information of council only”.

For a senior administrator to refuse to provide all the data required and as requested by councillors is insubordination.

There is a Corporate Culture that goes like this:

+ In the course of managing the affairs of the township corporation, there are legislated and regular actions that need to be taken. Sometimes, they will come up with an idea that they think is a good one, and go off and investigate, pick a preferred action.

+ A report is submitted, along with a couple of other options, for “the information of council”. A report is often prepared by, reviewed by and submitted by, the same person who holds two or more titles. So much for checks and balances in the information gathering stage of decision-making

+ Council receives a report document for information only. There is not necessarily any review of the contents, discussion about other options that in the report, no opportunity for consultation by councillors with constituents. It just appears on an agenda, and then disappears into a black hole.

+ However, a CAO considers “a report” to meet the definition of “reporting to” council in an accountability role. “Reporting to” means approval of all aspects of implementing a report’s contents must be approved by council by motion and by-law.

+ A CAO thus assumes that he or she has received “marching orders” from council and goes off and starts implementing a report, that does not have the necessary accompanying accountability directions to staff. A CAO has not received “marching orders” from council. A CAO has authorized the presentation of a report document, but has not received “authorization” from council to take any action.

The present corporate culture is to submit a report document for information only, then go off and start implementing it without formal approval, and councils tend to forget that it ever received the report until it’s CAO directed actions have been implemented and it’s too late.

Why does council forget? Because it doesn’t have a system of keeping track of all these reports “for information only” and doesn’t have a system of controlling its own agenda. When a report is received “for information only” it does not insist on placing a specific future date when the same report comes back to council for discussion and potential approval with accountability criteria attached. I’LL GIVE YOU ANOTHER EXAMPLE.

The last time the public has a record of council seeing anything about this restructuring endeavour was on the May 16, 2022, agenda item 10.1. The minutes state, “The project was launched to the Corporate Leadership Team on April 12, 2022.”

The wording is deceptive. It says the project was launched to the Corporate Leadership Team, but doesn’t say where it was launched from. Whose idea was this? Did anyone check that April 12, 2022 was a Tuesday? That there were no township council meetings at all that day? The public council meeting was April 18^th. I checked the agendas for all of March and April of 2022, and this item was not on any agenda.

This entire project appears to have risen from the aether – the clear sky beyond the clouds. A CAO just made this up, and on a Tuesday launched it. It appears to have arisen from some place restricted from public transparent view. Council must put policies and practices into place that require long-term, scheduled, planning for projects. Council must have a plan to know what is upcoming, when, why, and from whom.

Page 3 of this report indicates that Whitesell & Co. was the contracted consultant at a final cost of $65,536. It indicates that its purpose was to “assess the existing processes, practices, staffing and organization structure to identify opportunities for improvement….to identify options and develop a People Plan that would ensure efficiency and effectiveness in meeting current and anticipated (5-10 years) service delivery requirements”.

THIS FINAL PEOPLE REPORT HAS BEEN WITHHELD AND IS ALLEGED TO NOT EXIST, EVEN AFTER PAYING OVER $56,000 FOR IT.

Transparency is promoted in this township as a goal. In June of 2024 I submitted a Freedom of information request for a copy of the Whitesell report documents. It supplied some documents but it denied that a final report existed.

I appealed the refusal to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. The township confirmed that it had paid Whitesell & Co. the contracted amount but replied that could not find a final report – even though senior administration had already commenced reorganization and personnel movements in the meantime.

I suggested to the information and privacy commission’s mediator that the township ask the HR department for the documents. This last week, 8 months after asking, I got a document dated January 2023. This document, I understand, has not yet been received by this council.

The township is using this January 30, 2023 report to council, by John Whitesell, to conclude that it has not received any further “deliverables” from Whitesell, and that 3 items were not completed and a final report was not submitted.

The document used as evidence is dated January 30, 2023, but the anticipated dates for submitting the still outstanding documents were dated after this report was submitted. This is not the final document. It’s just the final one the township will release. What is in the final report documents that require such secrecy? Maybe its people report did not align with a CAOs desired outcome? We don’t know because the senior administration under the control of a CAO won’t tell us.

 + Feb / 03/ 23 for “CLT Presentation – Org Structure” 45% completed as of Jan 30.

+ Feb / 27 / 23 for “Write / Review / Edit Final Report”, 65% completed as of Jan. 30.

+ March / 06 / 23 for “Present Final report to Council”, not started as of Jan. 30.

I called John Whitesell in Toronto and left a message on his answering machine indicating what I was looking for and that the township did not have it. I called him again after the family day weekend and snow storm and talked to him directly. He told me that after receiving my phone message he had called Wilmot’s HR department advising them what I was asking for.

He indicated that his contract was with Wilmot and he was uncomfortable sharing documents that I should ask Lindsay Kelly for. I asked him if he had been paid the full amount contracted for and was it approximately $63 to $65,000? He replied that he had been paid in full.

I asked him if he had submitted all the reports in the four phases of the RFP including phase 4: People Plan & Final Report, specifically, “Write and layout the final report that incorporates the changes from the presentation” and “Submit final, AODA compliant version of the final report.” He replied that he had submitted all the documents and that I should ask HR for them.”

A reasonable person would conclude that:

1. Wilmot Township paid the full contracted amount (plus contingencies) of $65,536 to Whitesell & Co consultants and did not insist on receiving all the contracted documents. OR
2. Whitesell & Co. is being thrown under the bus by Wilmot Township, and its professional reputation is in jeopardy.

In either case, we have a problem –

+ Wilmot’s senior administration, and/or the current council is fiscally negligent in paying for services not received, or

+ there is deception in a lack of transparency to release documents that the consultant insists he provided, or

+ incompetence in allowing procedures and practices that facilitate the destruction of records or the misplacement/loss of documents paid for by tax payers.

+ pick another alternative.

This report tonight ignores any findings contained in the Whitesell presentation dated JANUARY 30, 2023. The Whitesell presentation document dated January 30, 2023, outlined the 4 phases in the whole review, and this report tonight stops at a phase 2 that does not align with the Whitesell report.

This report outlines on pages 3, 4, 5, and 6, actions that were taken unilaterally by senior staff under the direction/and/or supervision of CAOs without Council approval in the first place. Page 4 lists hirings that resulted from restructuring decisions made unilaterally by senior staff, and approved by council in closed session only after the fact. This unilateral restructuring and moving of personnel without the project’s approval by council, is probably insubordination by senior staff and incompetent supervision by councils. Hirings occurred after restructuring had occurred and hirings were retroactively approved to fill in blanks created by the restructuring.

Council lost control!

The next “people plan” document that I am aware of was presented to council in report CS-2024-32 on November 4, 2024, when the public had a chance to become aware of the senior administration’s hiring of 3 consultants to advise how to house between 11 and 23 more employees over the next 15 years. The staff report includes a consultant’s report by New Paradigms Inc. which recommends:

+ growing from 48 to 56 employees over 5 years or less

+ renovating the Castle at a cost of $1,042,500 in 2024 dollars.

The last line in the report by senior staff read, “Long term financial implications to be explored and documented for the 10 year capital forecast.”

Which 10-year capital forecast?

When the 2025 budget was released prematurely by a CAO to the public, and subsequently documents were supplied to council and the public, there was no 10-year capital forecast at all.

Per the OMA Council must “maintain the financial integrity of the municipality” and the CAO must ensure “the efficient and effective operation of the municipality”, which means the CAO is accountable for reporting to council how the budget facilitates efficient and effective operations, which includes a 10-year capital forecast.

The CFO and Acting-CAO said that he, unlike every other CFO around, could not produce a 10-year capital forecast without an approved budget for 2025 to work with. That’s as efficient as pushing a chain.

Are you kidding me? A CAO approves a report to council and the public calling for over $1 million in renovations to this Castle, and adding 23 more employees’ salaries, and stating that the cost would appear in a 10-year capital forecast, and then refuses to produce such a document without persistent nagging by councillors might be insubordination.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

But where did the need for 23 more employees come from if the Whitesell & Co consultant was intended to do just that? Tax payer shelled out $65,536 to Whitesell & Co., AND $17,808 to On Purpose Leadership, and $5,797 to Culture AMP, AND untold thousands to +VG Architects, AND Thinking Strategy: New Paradigms Inc., and Bethune Puttock Consulting Inc., AND MGA Consultants, AND who knows what other consultants.

The average municipal share of a Wilmot residential tax bill is about $1500. To pay for the Whitesell contract alone consumes the entire taxes of about 44 residential properties.

It appears to me that senior administration is off hiring consultants without adequate supervision and “accountability reporting” of its senior administrator by council.

She/he hires a consultant, doesn’t get a complete report, or loses it, or doesn’t like it and destroys it, and then a group together to brain-storm how many staff they want, hires 3 or 4 more consultants, and we’re looking at an increase in infrastructure over $1 million, and the staff costs.

Recommendations for Reorganization and Restructuring:

1. Hire a new CAO. Several residents have put together suggestions and have already delegated to small groups of councillors. More to come.
2. Redefine the role of the CAO so that one person has less power to filter information and exert arbitrary control over decision-making. The CAO role is a coordinator, a facilitator, a leader DOWN to hired staff. The recent CAOs have defined the role and acted as if they are “the top executive position in the corporation”. That is false. The top executive position is held by the mayor. The CAO is the top general management position in the administration staff. That’s it. Accountable up. Report up. Report out. No leadership up! No leadership out!
3. Direct the new CAO to create a software summary, on a multi-year calendar, of all the annual work tasks and goals for every department, representing every employee so that not just the department heads and the CAO, but also council and taxpayers know who does what, when. Council can then plan its agenda so that it is aware of what reports it can demand and/or expect to be appearing in a timely manner so that appropriate deliberation and consultation with citizens can occur. No more urgent or emergency agenda items appearing on an agenda.
4. Council must put policies and practices into place that require long-term, scheduled, planning for projects. Council must have a plan to know what is upcoming, when, why, and from whom.
5. All council agendas must be approved by the mayor in consultation with councillors, and in consultation with the CAO and the Manager of Communications and Strategic Initiatives.
6. All written reports must be submitted to council 20 working days prior to potentially appearing on an agenda. (10 is insufficient for consultations)
7. Put policies and practices in place that remove the ability of a CAO or any single administrator to both prepare and review any report. Two individuals will review any report to council. All reports must also be reviewed the Manager of Communications and Strategic Initiatives. No report will be presented to Council until approved by the Manager of Communications and Strategic Initiatives. [This reflects the recommendations in the Corporate Communications and Community Engagement Strategy report.]
8. Move the position of Manager of Communications and Strategic Initiatives out of the CAO’s office and place it under council, similar to that of Carly Pettinger. This makes this position independent of influence, as intended in the Corporate Communication and Community Engagement Strategy report.
9. Direct the new CAO, in coordination with the Clerk’s Office and the Manager of Communications and Strategic Initiatives, to produce an electronic database summary of all policies in the Policy Manual with the following searchable headings for each policy:

+ Section title

+ Policy number

+ Revision date

+ Approval date

+ Approval body

+ Issue date

+ Next date of review.

Thus, council has a calendar of which policies are up for review at which date, and agendas can be produced scheduling when council will first table a policy’s review. Example, if a policy is scheduled for completed review in February of a year, then it will appear on council’s calendar in Q3 of the preceding year.

10. Council needs to keep a closer eye on which consultants are used, the validity of the techniques to be used, and require supervisory/accountability reports that monitor progress along each step of a consultation’s phases.
11. Council must put practices and accountabilities in place to ensure that taxpayers’ money actually provides valid data and decision outcomes.
12. Direct the new CAO to develop a plan for changing the corporate culture as expressed in multiple consultants’ reports referred to above. This direction will give the CAO a deadline for submission of such plan to council. This plan may include retirements, reallocations, demotions, promotions, terminations of any staff, including existing Human Resources department staff.

[Rationale: The causes of the problem have been known for multiple years over multiple councils. It’s:

+   a lack of clear, accurate, complete, honest information managed in logical decision-making processes that involve citizens.

+ a lack of clear, firm, fair, consistent accountability procedures and practices that ensure that administration is accountable to council, procedures that provide specific direction and reporting back to council stages, before being approved by council and thus before administration and staff may take any implementation actions.

     [Rationale: This report tonight is just one example of how council has lost track of what its administration is implementing without council’s approval. A written report “for information only” is not reporting to / being accountable to council. A CAO and staff do not have “marching orders” until all the i’s have been dotted, all the t’s crossed, all the accountability stages for reporting back to council at specified times during implementation, and time deadlines and cost controls are all in place, AND a formal approval by-law is passed in public session.

+   weak, lazy or sycophantic councillors.

+   stubborn and/or incompetent staff leadership. The only thing that has changed is the makeup of the council when citizens get fed up and take the only action they can. Citizens are fed up with inert councils and have very little trust for obtuse leadership within staff positions.]

13. Pass a policy by-law, in counsel with legal counsel, directing senior administration to answer questions from the public without them having to pay $30 for FOI appeals and waste months waiting for appeals to compel staff to answer questions.
14. Do not consider any review of the Council – Staff Relations Policy until after a new CAO has been hired, and subsequently after a Restructuring, Re-Organization and People plan has been produced in consultation with citizens.
15. Contact John Whitesell at Whitesell & Co. and get the allegedly outstanding documents as contracted for in Phase 4: People Plan & Final Report in the RFP, specifically:

+   “Council Project Update – 10/03/22 – 10/03/22 – 100% – In Progress

+   CLT Presentation – Org Structure –  01/03/23  –  02/03/23 – 45%  – In Progress

+   Write/Review/Edit Final Report –  02/06/23 – 02/27/23  –  65% In Progress

+   Present Final Report to Council – 02/27/23 – 03/06/23 – 0% – Not Started

Note the following screen shots from the January 30,2023, document. Note dates in list above projected completion dates after this document was dated, and the township should be able to find them and provide them to me and the public. The council needs to have the Whitesell documents to compare what Whitesell was reporting and what is contained in this report presented tonight.

I DO NOT TRUST this senior administration. It has alleged facts that are not accurate – evidenced above. It has been deceptive and not transparent in its communications. It has falsely accused and labelled me as asking questions that are deemed frivolous, vexatious, and in bad faith. I have been given false and incomplete responses to requests for information and therefore do not trust the accuracy of the contents of the report presented tonight. At this point I trust John Whitesell when he told me he had submitted all the RFP contracted documents and had been paid in full.

I have provided the facts available to me. If the CAO’s office can prove me wrong, I challenge them to do so.

16. Provide direction to the Manager of Human Resources to require Whitesell & Co to provide copies of the allegedly outstanding documents, even if the township has to compensate Whitesell for any additional labour to do so.
17. Adopt a strong mayor model to eliminate cliques which have been manipulated by astute CAOs so as to divide and rule.

BOTTOM LINE

I am really looking forward to Wilmot having a new CAO in place who has the qualifications and experience to, in cooperation with council and citizens, lead a culture change in the corporation’s administration.

This delegation will be submitted to the clerk as official correspondence and will be available in full on the website www.thisiswilmot.ca

The 26-page Whitesell report of January 30, 2023, will be on my website.

Sincerely,

Barry Wolfe

Baden

Appendices

Screenshots from

“Organization Structure & People Plan

Project Update & Structural Recommendations”

January 30/2023

26 pages

See below.