City manager Patrick Draper said he’s willing to face a provincial inquiry into his process of hiring a city councillor as the city’s new chief community development officer.
“Personally I would welcome an inquiry,” Draper told council on Monday. “I have no qualms or reservations about the process that I used … it was all above board.”
The remarks came during a last-minute agenda item during Monday’s council meeting. The mayor offered Draper the chance to respond to a presentation delivered by resident Steve Stone during last week’s meeting, which questioned chief community development officer Gilles Prefontaine’s qualifications and the hiring process that was used to select the now-former councillor for the job.
Stone, along with Bill Tuchak and Kristin Toms, compiled a report using documents accessed through freedom of information requests and other research that has since been sent to the Minister of Municipal Affairs, requesting the affair be examined by that department.
Draper outlined some of the chronology of the search for applicants and the eventual selection of Prefontaine. He also defended Prefontaine’s performance, saying the former councillor has exceeded his expectations and done a “fabulous” job in the role.
He also reminded council that hiring authority is delegated to the city manager through city bylaw.
“There have been accusations that I created the position description to fit Mr. Prefontaine … it was not created for Mr. Prefontaine,” he said of the changes that occurred to the position description that swapped the title from general manager of planning and engineering to chief community development officer.
The advertisement for candidates was launched in November 2014 by the recruitment firm retained to find candidates. That firm also conducted the first round of interviews between November 2014 and March 2015. Reviews of potential candidates’ biographies by the city manager and the city’s director of human resources was ongoing throughout January and March 2015, with the second round of interviews conducted with three finalists in March.
The interviews were conducted with Draper, human resources and the search firm, Draper said. Each of the three finalists were scored.
“Mr. Prefontaine received the highest ranking,” he said.
He disputed some of the claims made in the resident-compiled report, including suggestions that staff have left because of Prefontaine’s hiring. He said he has personal knowledge of the reasons people have left, including council behaviour, council direction, directions from the city manager, more money, lower workloads, new challenges and other positive moves.
“There’s many reasons why someone would change positions,” he said.
Some on council had lots of questions about the presentation, starting with the inadvertent release of potential candidate names that led the report authors to researching those candidates’ qualifications.
Questions were also asked about the redaction of the meeting video which occurred – the part of Stone’s presentation where he highlighted qualifications of those possible other candidates, though he didn’t mention names, was cut from the city’s online video record.
Chief legislative officer Chris Belke said the hope was to mitigate the personal information that was released in the report.
Coun. Cam MacKay spent some time disagreeing with staff on interpretations of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, including asking for copies of personnel records and the scoring of Prefontaine’s application.
Coun. Bob Russell took issue with Draper saying he was satisfied with the responses to questions the city manager gave him about Prefontaine’s hiring after Russell’s election in June 2015.
“I was not satisfied, simply because Mr. Draper, to use an analogy, took the fifth on all of them,” Russell said.
Coun. Sheena Hughes pointed out that while there was all this concern about these candidates’ personal details, Draper seemed to have no issue releasing information about resident Gord Hennigar during a meeting in November about Draper’s defamation lawsuit.
“Why was that not a problem and this is a problem?” she asked.
Hughes also asked why Draper hadn’t given more of a heads-up to the mayor about hiring Prefontaine, especially considering the action triggered a costly byelection. She then questioned the relationship between the CAO and chief elected official.
“I’m not even going to answer that particular question,” Draper said, after noting Hughes has “a tendency to exaggerate.”
Mayor Nolan Crouse stepped in and said given the decision and the sensitive nature of it, Draper had probably decided to only tell him a few days in advance. He said the relationship between the two is fine.
Council voted unanimously in favour of a motion from Russell to postpone discussion on the issue and the report given by Draper, since they had only received a paper copy shortly before the verbal report was given.
