Prince George city council dismissed some folks from their jobs last week. Here's who they let go:
- Steve Nycholat, divisional manager for Allnorth Consultants, MBA graduate from UNBC.
- Greg Stewart, president of Sinclar Group Forest Products.
- Sean Kehler, vice-president, commercial financial services, Royal Bank of Canada.
- Bob Redden, president of EDI Environmental Dynamics Inc.
- Doug Bell, owner/operator Family Fast Foods group of companies, which includes the new Northern Lights Estate Winery, and president of the national marketing association for Wendy's Restaurants of Canada.
- Alice Downing, management consultant, longtime UNBC benefactor and current board member with Canadian Blood Services.
- Sonya Hunt, general manager, Pine Centre Mall, MBA graduation from UNBC.
- Dr. Charles Jago, UNBC past president, Order of Canada recipient, Order of B.C. recipient, Northern Health board chair, Canfor Pulp board chair.
- Colleen Sparrow, publisher, The Prince George Citizen.
Don't worry. They were just volunteers so there are no big severance packages to hand out. These nine individuals, powerful and well-connected players in the Prince George business community, formed the board of directors for Initiatives Prince George. CEO Heather Oland reported to this group, who assessed the quality of her work, approved her budget and provided her with guidance on how to encourage economic development.
By announcing the dissolution of IPG at the end of the year, city council is making two statements. First, the IPG board of directors handpicked by council to oversee IPG was not doing a good enough job and second, that city council and senior bureaucrats believe they can do a better job at attracting economic development in Prince George than the current model.
Really?
If the IPG board and staff weren't delivering in the eyes of the new mayor and council, why approve a 2.5 per cent increase to their 2015 budget? A budget increase is usually a reward for job well done and it expresses confidence in future results. If mayor and council were planning a review of IPG that could include its possible termination, wouldn't it have been more appropriate to suspend that budget increase, pending the outcome of that review? Instead, city could took passive-aggressive management to a new level - here's that extra money you asked for but, by the way, you're fired.
Mayors often see themselves as economic development officers and no doubt Lyn Hall sees that as a key part of his job. Colin Kinsley's trips to China were with that hat tight on his head and Don Zurowski's entire mayoral platform last year read like an economic development mission statement. History, however, is not on the side of politicians and senior bureaucrats proclaiming hands-on government management can attract new business to the community better than business people.
At IPG, Oland answered to sophisticated, experienced business leaders. Going forward, she or her replacement as the senior economic development officer at the city will now report to planning and development director Ian Wells, who will report to city manager Kathleen Soltis, who will report to mayor and council. Expect Walter Babicz (legal and regulatory services director), Kris Dalio (corporate services director) and Rob Van Adrichem (incoming external relations director) to have plenty of input and ideas of their own on economic development.
That's a lot of extra meetings and discussions and reports for an activity that will now apparently operate with more efficiency and more transparency than it did before and save city taxpayers as much as $500,000 per year.
IPG was certainly not perfect in either its management or its ability to meet its goals but bringing it in-house means immersing economic development in the quicksands of both politics and bureaucracy. That's a recipe for disaster, not improvement. Put another way, economic development is too important a task to trust politicians and bureaucrats over business people to deliver.
As they say in retail, you break it, you bought it. City council has broken IPG and kicked its board of directors and staff to the curb. Three years from now, if economic development is in worse shape than ever and those operational savings have evaporated, at least voters will know exactly who to blame when they head to the polls.
