I guess there’s times in life where you just have to decide who it is you’d rather be sued by.
Imagine putting yourself in a position precarious enough that you can clearly see that, no matter what you do, somebody’s going to come at you with civil litigation.
Then, and simply for the point of making an argument, what if you were to put the corporation you work for in that precarious position?
At least to me, and I’m often alone in my thinking, none of anything above strikes me as good business, personal, corporate, or anything in between.
Getting sued, one way or another, is generally an indicator that something’s gone wrong, that somebody or group of somebodies messed up, that a grievance ensued, a grievance whose only remedy is cash.
The Town of Renfrew has signed an Information Technology (IT) service-provision contract with a company called OnServe, who by all accounts is a straight-up legitimate choice for the job had the award not been called into question, not by anything they did or might have done, but rather for the potentially and possibly fatally-flawed process that was utilized by town staff in awarding the contract in the first place.
That was a three-year contract worth approximately $85,000/year, which roughly extends out to $235,000 over the course of the deal.
That may well mean that the Town of Renfrew will be paying somewhere in the area of $470,000 for IT services over that time. The first $235,000 to ONServe for delivering the service, and a possibly a second $235,000 to one Ian McFarlane as compensatory damages for his exclusion from the award due to an alleged mishandling of the tendering process.
That’s just Mr. McFarlane. If he were to pursue a legal remedy and be successful, what would stop any of the other jilted applicants from doing likewise on the same grounds? Could you imagine a potential of five lawsuits coming our way because of a shoddy process that appears to be ill-thought-out and, when brought to light, resulting in what looks to be wagons being circled and circular logic offered up as a rudimentary defence.
in fairness, I can’t claim to be privy to Mr. McFarlane’s thinking on the matter, so any talk of lawsuits on my part is not only premature, but also presupposing. But still.
This is now the fourth iteration of this issue, one that I first took note of as an emboldened council refused to rubber-stamp something thrown before it at the last minute with a staff recommendation that it be passed with no questions asked. And it wasn’t.
After criticizing the elected members of council for needlessly deferring to administrative staff, making them the de facto rulers at Town Hall, that morning meeting had me witnessing a rebellion of sorts, where our council decided that they were the ring masters and not the elephants. But with that show of steel, with that demonstration of resolve, off they went into closed session, there to discuss freely the things that the rest of us aren’t mature enough to handle, free from any complaints about lack of transparency, never having to worry about any potential findings of an integrity commissioner that’s on the town’s payroll and who can be ignored with impunity. An integrity commissioner that works as an adjunct to a law firm that has to go through its own competitive bidding process just to be the integrity commissioner.
Who in blazes built this house, anyway?
The third episode was two weeks ago, at a regular council meeting, where the brakes were put on the awarding of the contract, or at least it appeared some brake pressure was evident. Mr. McFarlane made a presentation, was asked questions, and there was a back-and-forth. Councillor Andrew Dick even declared that the IT contract bidding would be re-opened with a new RFP — Request For Proposal — and off we went into the dark, some of us thinking there was a win for democracy in the night air.
But no.
Appearing before council yet a fourth time, here the issue was again, only this time whatever it is that happens behind the scenes and between meetings seems to have transpired again, as we witnessed a meek back-and-forth between Councillor Dick and the Treasurer, Charlene Jackson.
The treasurer, despite saying a lot and saying nothing at the same time, easily beat back anything the Councillor had to offer, not because of the power or legitimacy of her defensive arguments, but rather because somebody tore the wolf suit off the councillor. That and he just simply accepted what she had to say. Even thanked her.
But I will say this regarding Councillor Dick. Yes, he gave up way too easily and way too quickly, and went far to meekly into that good night. But that said, he was really the only one of them to dare to make a peep one way or another, aside from maybe Jason Legris who wondered what the hell was going on and Reeve Peter Emon who asked two questions regarding the RFP process as it was undertaken in this case. All to seemingly negligible effect. Legris’ question was procedural, so not connected to what was going on, but rather how it was going on. Reeve Emon’s questions were to the core of the issue, but were brushed aside by a treasurer who had just sat Councillor Dick down
And he got sassed by the treasurer for his efforts. Set him straight, she did, and almost dared anyone else to have the temerity to question her on any of this. Makes me wonder what this individual is like behind closed doors. If she can roll over elected officials in a public forum, she must be a real handful when nobody’s looking.
And so the treasurer mowed down Councillor Dick with her use of what appeared to be circumlocutory explanations that were accompanied by some awkward body language. She was also apparently assisted mid-explanation by a helpful Town Clerk, Carolynn Errett, who peppered her with assistive text messages as she responded to the councillor. You know, to me, if I wanted to know what the Town Clerk had to say, I’d ask the Town Clerk. And if the Town Clerk had a factual clarification, that could be made on her own and not as a covert throw-in to the treasurer, which really, unfortunately, has the look of collusion about it. And it was the Clerk herself who got tripped-up by being caught on her phone during a question directed at her by Councillor Dick some weeks ago.
A councillor asking questions of a staff administrator is a one-to-one interaction, not a one-to-many. It’s also a respect piece. For people who style themselves as the guardians of the rules of procedure and decorum, this text message thing is pretty high school.
There is something really wrong happening here. There’s just way too many loose threads lying around on this, and they can’t take the stress of being pulled upon. Mr. McFarlane pulled on a few of them a couple of weeks back. Then Councillor Dick started to apply pressure. And then suddenly stopped, as if stricken with a bad case of Kumbaya.
And now? What’s changed?
What happened in two weeks that shifted the landscape back to where we were back when Council could have just kept the blindfold on and rubber-stamped the whole thing and saved us from all of this? You know, the Ma-Te-Way Model of being an elected official. Which, by the way, appears to be what we have on this issue.
Please, elected members, direct no more fingers of accountability towards the previous council. You are absolutely no better when you allow stuff like this to sail right past your nose and do nothing other than grandstand for ten minutes before caving in. Please don’t think that your little charade of making it look like you were actually going to assert yourself has any chance pf successfully differentiating yourself from the previous crew.
No points of privilege to hide behind out here, gentlemen. You gotta take those lumps.
I have reached a significant level of impatience with all the admin-speak that has the distinct feel of horse-hockey attached to it. When a staffer gives an answer that drifts off into nothingness, backed by flimsiness, supported by tinsel and fairy dust, all of it derived from the Municipal Act, then the time has come to demand answers in English.
Effective communication demands that the communicator of the message has a built-in responsibility of ensuring that the message being communicated is received with understanding. Communication is not a contest, it’s a goal. And when your audience is sitting there shaking their heads, then I would submit that it’s you with the communication problem.
When people with an impressive array of degrees and credentials open their mouths and say absolutely nothing, and the rest of us just go along with it because we don’t understand and don’t want to look stupid, then I’d have to suggest that the Municipal Act, and those that sleep with it under their pillows have successfully flummoxed the rest of us.
“I have a motion to retract the other motion, but because I need someone to make a motion, and another to second the motion, that motion may not be talked about unless somebody makes a motion to allow that motion to proceed, so long as that motion receives a two-thirds majority, which we can do even though Councillor McWhirter’s not here, bringing us down to six, because two-thirds of six is four, the sky is blue, and how about those Blue Jays? Do we have a motion?”
I’ve never suffered from motion sickness before in my life. Now, apparently, I do, every second Tuesday night.
Councillor Dick claims he made that motion a couple of weeks back so as to give himself time to “investigate” the matter further. Then he went to Mexico, where the answers to all important things reside. He returned a new man, one seemingly willing to throw Mr. McFarlane under the bus.
The reeve kind of got it right when he said to the treasurer something to the effect of “I respect what you’re saying, but honestly, if I was bidding for this project myself, I’d be a little cheesed too.”
Then she sassed him while his back was turned.
Everyone present seemed to agree that there was something amiss about the RFP process, and that it should be examined more closely, but just not in this case, because, well, this is different somehow, mostly I guess because the town had maneuvered itself into a corner it couldn’t get out of without incurring a lawsuit from OnServe.
And then the logic train toot-tooted out of the station.
Oh, and how about those Blue Jays?
NEWSMAGRENFREW 