In today’s technical world you can buy a wireless camera the size of pop bottle cap that transmits signal up to 1,500 feet away with color and sound. That piece of equipment can be placed in an air vent, behind a picture or in a light fixture and the signal can be picked up by a router and transmitted over the internet to someone’s computer any where in the world, at $800.00 it is a hell of a deal.
Brings new meaning to the term “In Camera” wouldn’t you say!
Imagine if somebody had put one of these little beauties in Council Chambers, just for shits and grins for In Camera meetings. Wouldn’t that cause a stir?
Not that anyone would do such a thing Right here in River City!
The following is a summary of what happened with respect to the Hirering of Rhonda Cook as CAO.
It is time for the public to know the circumstances regarding the selection process of the filling the position of Chief Administrative Officer for the Town of South Bruce Peninsula. (Like we need one)
The Council of the day decided to go out and hire a company to advertise and recruit potential candidates for the Chief Administrative Officer position at a cost of $20,000.00 plus. There were two companies that submitted proposals for the executive search services to assist in the recruitment of a New Chief Administrative Officer. After the company was selected it was brought to Councils attention that there were seven other proposals that were inadvertently misplaced within the Town Building. There were clear written instructions explaining where the sealed envelopes were to be placed, but were ignored. This only came to light when town staff was contacted by two of the other responding companies who wanted to know the results of their submission and if they were selected.
At the time one of the questioning representatives produced a Courier Receipt to prove that they had in fact made a submission and that the town staff had received the proposal. The staff declared that “it was just an oversight”. (Hmmmmm!)
To date it is still not clear to anyone who, why and how something as important as seven applicant proposals could disappear and were not given to Council.
Could it be that someone didn’t do their job at city hall??? Say it isn’t so! Or was it planned by oh say the acting CAO?
The chosen company, advertised for the skilled candidates with a specific criteria and rated the individuals on their education (university education was required), qualifications and experience. At the closing of the advertisement there were between 30 and 40 candidates. A short list was developed by the company and eight candidates were evaluated on their merit and submitted to Council. From these eight contenders, Ms Cook was rated by the company with the lowest score. Out of eight, four were chosen by Council for an interview, which included Ms. Cook Just before the interview one candidate declined. Then the interviews with the three candidates took place.
Each Council member selected a first, second and third choice, in that order. Ms Cook placed third on merit. Interestingly, Hoath and Lamont changed their minds after they heard Kerr’s choices. So that changed the 2nd choice candidate to Ms. Cook. They ignored the scoring sheet that Council used to measure the strengths of the candidates.
While the Town and the First Choice were negotiating, Ms. Cook, after learning that she did not get the job, she took it upon herself to share her displeasure with ratepayers who in turn called many members of Council to complain that Rhonda lost her job.
There were two votes. One to offer the position to Ms. Cook, another ambushed by Kerr and Wunderlick which was defeated and subsequently, another vote to offer to the 2nd choice before Hoath and Lamont changes their minds. This was tied and defeated. This put Council back to square one.
On the advice of the hired company, Council conducted a second interview with three candidates. The previous two, from the first round, which included Ms. Cook plus a new third candidate. Interestingly the newest candidate did not show up or even call for the interview and to date has not explained the reason for the no show.
At that point a motion moved forward to offer the position to Ms. Cook even though the other candidate from the first round scored higher. During the second round of interviews not all the previous information supplied to Council was included, that is, the summaries and scoring done by the hired company.
The majority of Council voted to offer the position to Ms. Cook because “she had done such a good job for the last ten months”. When the hired company was asked about her lack of qualifications, the response was that the town could pay her to take courses to update her skill level.
Ms. Cook was offered a pay rate level 1 which was accepted by Ms. Cook, however she indicated that she would like more money because she was concerned that there were some department heads making more money than her. The majority of Council (Harron, Hoath, Kerr, Lamont and Wunderlick) in their wisdom decided to offer her more than what she originally agreed to because of her 10 months experience. For the record this positions pay scale is $93,059.00 to $108,865.00 plus 100% medical and dental benefits.
So what we as taxpayers should be asking is if the Five members (back room bandits Harron, Hoath, Kerr, Lamont and Wunderlick) had already decided to offer the job to Ms. Cook, why would they hire a firm and pay that firm $20,0000 to recruit Rhonda Cook???????????????????
So let me think and Wunderlick wants to go to Queens Park!
Smile you never know who is watching!!!
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Bruce
Bruce on the Bruce 