Ottawa City Managers' time is up | Unpublished
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Earle Rheaume's picture
Ottawa, Ontario
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Looking back over 81 years I had the good fortune to have had a wonderful mom, a great wife and family, a successful career in business and excellent health. Sure there were ups and downs but they were too few to mention. Retirement for me means giving back some of that good fortune and I have chosen to advocate for those citizens who for reasons of their own cannot or will not fight for themselves. They include the old, sick poor, disabled and homeless.

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Ottawa City Managers' time is up

November 4, 2014

Kent Kirkpatrick and Steve Kanellakos are no longer assets to the City of Ottawa. They are liabilities that taxpayers can’t afford.

In his 2001 Annual Report former Auditor General Alain Lalonde presented many of their blunders. And our latest Auditor General Ken Hughes condemned them in his 2013 report for their mishandling of the Green Bin and the Orgaworld files.

You have to be suspicious when the city manager has a lousy track record and city council ignores it over and over.
 
Kirkpatrick’s career in municipal government spanned 23 years with the Town of Carleton Place before moving to Ottawa. Arnprior’s budget for 2012 is $35 Million. Ottawa’s budget is $2.5 Billion. That’s 71 times greater than that of the Arnprior budget.
 
Kanellakos graduated from Carleton University with a Masters of Public Administration and a Bachelor of Administration (Honours) about 23 years ago. He had plenty of theoretical experience but his business and municipal government background experience was limited. He was learning “on the job” while being responsible for  over a $1 billion dollar budget.
 
Their responsibilities require different leadership and management skills that they do not possess.
 
The Peter Principal applies to both.
 
The Peter Principle is based on the notion that employees will get promoted as long as they are competent, but at some point will fail to get promoted beyond a certain job because it has become too challenging for them.

Employees rise to their level of incompetence and stay there. Over time, every position in the hierarchy will be filled by someone who is not competent enough to carry out his or her new duties.