The city council meeting of May 14 has been weighing heavily on my mind.
Following that meeting, the press released their summary and it has definitely cast a questionable light on the competency and comprehension of Councilor's Parent, Fortin, Signoretti and myself, who were the only ones who chose to speak up about it.
(It's no fault of the press, it's just difficult to condense a four hour meeting into a short news article).
Comments made by a few others suggest that it's "rather unfortunate" that we weren't able to grasp or understand what they feel had been obvious regarding the details of the 9 and 11 per cent raise increases to certain staff.
For context, I feel it's important to note that most municipalities have a Delegated Authority Bylaw for their CAO and other Directors. It's not something we suddenly thought was a "good idea".
So, while some people are commenting that it's "all Council's fault" for giving the power to the CAO in the first place, that's simply not the case.
And while it's a common bylaw, further scrutiny has revealed by some of us on council, that the Delegated Authority Bylaw for Greater Sudbury is almost 38 pages long (plus 22 amendments), compared to other municipalities that only have on average 6 pages.
Clearly, this deserves its own audit as to how that grew over the last little while, but that will be for another day.
Some comments made at the May 14 meeting collectively made it seem like we either:
A) Didn't read the notes/report or B) We read it, but we obviously and sadly just didn't have the capacity to grasp that information that was (NOT!) provided to us.
In fact, Coun. Leduc subsequently went on CTV to suggest that some of us on council who have jobs may not have the time to devote to actually doing our homework like the retired councillors do.
(I am paraphrasing but I am not far off). Your comments are indignant and insulting, Coun. Leduc, but that doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
Furthermore, your recollection of what you believe to be accurate information about what exactly was made available to us in closed sessions of council is also way off in left field. Your comments suggest that four of us are lying and incompetent, and I believe that was your true intention of having airtime about it.
We all know that the $520,000 was never disclosed to us prior or during budget discussions, nor was it disclosed to us in any closed documents until it was leaked to Sudbury.com, and I will die on my sword over this fact!!!!
Yes, there was a closed meeting last September which highlighted the graph of specific non-unionized positions, and how the CAO explained the city is behind in meeting the 50th percentile in salaries for those positions, but THAT'S IT.
No costs were shared. No budget impact was shared and no percentage increase was made by the CAO at that time.
That meeting was merely for information purposes only and to grant authority to the CAO to make a good judgment call moving forward based on that information.
Previous council didn't want to "commit political suicide" during an election year and took the easy way out, according to Coun. Leduc in response to comments made by Coun. Parent.
And even earlier in 2023, council wouldn't approve a six-per-cent increase suggested by the CAO … so again, what made the CAO ever think that nine and 11 per cent would be "reasonable" or palatable to council?
Like I said, It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
We now realize too late that "power is good, but control is better" in this case. We did give him that power, in good faith to exercise good judgment, and not just to benefit a few employees.
But as the CAO, he should be able to ascertain that a decision like this would have a trickle-down effect within the corporation and THAT should ALWAYS be on the top of his list of importance.
In voting to take away this delegated authority, unanimously, we ALL agreed that proper judgment was not made by the CAO.
Perhaps some of my colleagues voted in favor to renege the Delegated Authority because it would be "political suicide" again if they didn't vote yes? I don't know and it's irrelevant to me at this point, but I have lost so much respect for some of them.
When we decided that fateful September day to grant more delegated authority to the CAO, Councillor Fortin is 100 per cent truthful that we indeed DID have a rather robust conversation that would suggest that the CAO would come back to us "If the raises were out the reasonable range".
It was a" spit and a handshake" moment and we should have never agreed to that, but we did.
After all, shouldn't council trust their only employee with this everyday responsibility?
A few of us admittedly joined the rest of council, reluctantly, as the "right thing to do" and quite honestly, because I believe there is definitely pressure and an unspoken expectation to please the mayor and for us to all get along and show solidarity to the public in our decisions, after having such a fractured council for the eight years prior, and we've been doing a pretty good job of that for the most part.
Coun. Fortin is also 100-per-cent truthful when she reiterated that the nine and 11 per cent, nor the actual cost of the increase decided by the CAO, was NOT part of the closed Finance Report brought to us in February 2024 (the night that Cllr Montpellier sadly passed away).
We didn't have the opportunity to discuss that report with the CAO that night because we canceled the meeting out of respect for Coun. Montpellier and his family.
It's also important to note that the report presented to us that evening only identified a six per cent and eight per cent raise.
The information contained in that report did not indicate that three per cent was also added in addition!
This would have been the time for the CAO to be fully transparent with us, I would think?
I don't believe it's unreasonable to expect that a report would have all details in it instead of just details the CAO feels we need to know.
In the meantime, some city staff got wind of the raises shortly after and they leaked confidential employee contract letters to the press, that even Council wasn't privy to.
Can you now understand how many of us on council were blindsided?
And it doesn't matter to me who leaked it. That's the least of our concerns quite frankly.
What stands out is that the CAO didn't consider how granting a nine and 11 per cent increase to a very small number of senior employees (and not even spread it out over a few years like Coun. Signoretti suggested) wouldn't have an adverse effect on the thousands of other employees who work so hard for us, many of them in very laborious jobs, who only received three per cent.
How does someone who holds such a high position of authority and trust miss the mark like this?
Council is constantly being told by the CAO that unless we give more raises, many of our very valuable, skilled workers will end up quitting or leave town and move away.
I have a very hard time believing that. Yes, making more money is great, but we have a wonderful city to live in and I don't believe that any of our employees are stepping up and saying "If you don't give me a $20,000 raise, I am quitting and I am going to move away to be excellent someplace else".
The city provides so much work/life balance opportunities, benefits and pension, and I have a very difficult time believing that it's that easy for someone to just up and quit, and move their families down south so they can get paid a bit more.
More often than not, most people don't leave jobs because of pay (especially when they are already making six figures). They leave because of a toxic work environment and bad management.
And even so, if there was proper succession planning, we should have lots of equally qualified people that work for us who would be glad to be given the opportunity to get a promotion for the wages we are ABLE to afford to pay without bankrupting us or creating more undue strain on the municipal levy.
I take offence to Coun. Leduc's statement that council is backpedaling because we "GOT CAUGHT", suggesting that council as a whole is guilty of something.
For those who didn't watch the council meeting of May 14, that statement prompted me to challenge him on that in open council. This resulted in him raising his voice at me to loud and unacceptable levels.
Yes, I was not backing down, but again, I will die on my sword that what he was saying was muddy details at best.
(If you'd like to watch, you can fast forward to the three-hour mark on the video that is available on the city website under agendas & meetings. Just go to the calendar for May 14).
Councillors Parent, Signoretti, Fortin and myself were vocal about our accounts of what happened.
Yet, Coun. MacIntosh, Sizer, Leduc and Mr. (Kevin) Fowke (general manager of corporate services) insist it was "in the budget".
I was so upset in that moment that I did not ask any of them to PROVE IT to me.
So please; indulge those of us who are clearly incapable of reading the simplest of documents and identify where the $520,000 was listed in the budget (a massive binder with thousands of pages, that has no drop-down menus of individual employees and their salaries by department).
I will wait, but you won't find it, because it doesn't have its own line item and it certainly wasn't highlighted.
It's impossible to find it because of how it's conveniently BAKED INTO THE PIE.
But again, why would I need to look for it if I had no idea it even happened in the first place to even ask a question about it?
What I am hearing from Coun. MacIntosh, Sizer, Leduc and Mr. Fowke from that meeting, is that we should have been clairvoyant to know that the CAO had decided on a nine and 11 per cent increase.
There were so many questions asked ahead of time and at those budget meetings throughout November and December. Never once was this EVER offered up to us and there are many emails to back this up as fact!
What's plain and simple to me is that when the CAO did use the Delegated Authority, he should have disclosed it to us shortly after, especially knowing it would affect our budget the way it did.
That should be a reasonable expectation from our only employee and a key indicator of a healthy and respectful relationship between a CAO and the council.
I surely can't be the only one who has that expectation? Maybe I should spend more time in the CAO's office so I can get information that others aren't getting, but I shouldn't have to.
At no point did the CAO or Mr. Fowke EVER allude, offer, disclose or bring to our attention that VERY IMPORTANT information of his decision made in October 2023, a decision that impacted not only our levy, but also created a ripple effect of a lack of trust towards us as council and also our lead staff who participate in the CBA (Collective Bargaining) process in good faith with union staff members (who didn't receive those extravagant awards & increases).
So again, please indulge me and show me proof that this information was disclosed to us ahead of time, or at ANY TIME, with costs.
The level of trust is broken. There is an absolute onus on the CAO to have disclosed this to us and not by a leak.
I am not going to let this one slide. I work hard for people to trust me and what I say and I am certainly not going to allow another councillor or a staff member the opportunity to make the people who elected me/us to have an opinion that I/we simply can't comprehend something that was NOT presented to us.
And for all of those people who are saying "too little, too late", or "why does the CAO still have a job?" or "Good, they took the Delegated Authority but they aren't going far enough", all I can say is that if my board of directors went public and said they didn't trust me with making important decisions on my own, clearly demonstrating their lack of faith in me, I would probably resign, because it would be the right thing to do and clearly we are going in "different directions".
I am only one seat on council, but if I had Strong Mayor powers, I know what I would have done a long time ago.
I respect our mayor and his leadership a lot, but maybe it's time for Mayor Lefebvre to answer these questions and explain it to the rest of us.
Natalie Labbée is the city councillor for Ward 7.
