Councillors and administration, do you understand how serious individuals take your actions or more preciously “lack of action by the council and administration.”
Whereas “public officials” and employees and members of Boards, Commissions, and Committees of the city of Moose Jaw have an obligation not merely to obey the law but to act in a manner that is so scrupulous their conduct will bare the closest public scrutiny.
1. Canadian Tire deal
“Land sales is something we do not put out to the public…it interferes with our ability to do land sales,” Puffalt said.
2. City administration should have given a report saying the deal had expired, but instead, someone at city hall negotiated a new agreement without authorization, said Swanson.
3. “This is a landmark deal for the City of Moose Jaw,” Moose Jaw Mayor Fraser Tolmie said.
“This is the largest land deal in our city’s history, and we are poised to see tremendous economic growth with this development.”
4. A previous mayor of our city went to China to attract business, and the taxpayers of Moose Jaw footed the bill.
5. The additional $20,000 that Puffalt was recently paid is not part of the pay raise, Tolmie added. That money was for Puffalt’s work in “managing Mosaic Place” during its transition to a new management company.
a. Have you councillors ever heard the words, “any other duties as required,” a standard line in most manager’s contracts.
6. When the city manager was first hired on May 7, 2018, one of the negotiation points that Puffalt put forward was this pay increase, explained Mayor Fraser Tolmie to bring his pay in line with two other cities.
7. City council at that time said it wanted a performance review first to ensure all standards were being met before it would consider a pay raise.
8. City Manager Jim Puffalt in a written release. “Jim has been aggressively working to attract and facilitate investment in the City of Moose Jaw, and we believe he’s the right person to help us change the narrative about what our City can accomplish.”
Jim Dixon, Manager of Economic Development for Moose Jaw, yet we have Tolmie and Puffalt doing this to little or complete failures.
9. Maybe if the mayor and council spent more time making sure the citizens they serve are getting the best governance for those citizens, they may have noticed this gem, that has been ignored by the mayor, council, and administration, yet is part of Bylaw 4381 for over 30 years.
Use of Public Property (bylaw 4381)
4. No official shall request or be permitted the use of City owned vehicles, equipment, materials, or property for personal convenience or profit, except when such services are available to to the public generally or are provided as city policy for the use of such officials or employees in the conduct of official business.
5. Obligation to Citizens (bylaw 4381)
No official or employee shall grant any special consideration, treatment, or advantage to any citizen beyond which is available to every other citizen.
a. Those city owned vehicles that sit in front of private residences and of course the vehicle that the city manger drives at the expense of taxpayers.
b. Not to forget the free admission to Yara Centre that the city manager granted to city employees to “improve moral”; what about the rest of Moose Jaw’s citizens moral.
1. The “temporary assignment policy”, are very generous and changing the policy to 11 days from two days would still mean the municipality still has a “generous policy compared to other municipalities,” Swanson stated.
Lastly, how many of the above statements could be grounds for an ethic’s review, if there were a process in Bylaw 4381 as required by the Cities Act 66.1?
Just in case some may think I don’t have fond memories of Moose Jaw, let me say 52 years ago, I met the love of my life in Moose Jaw. And we got to walk in Crescent Park.
-- Carter Currie
