The second-in-command at engineering, Peter Judd, has been tapped, it appears, to replace Dave Rudberg as general manager for Olympics preparation. The news came as a surprise to him. There was no posting or even internal application. He was simply asked by city manager Penny Ballem to do it.
Peter, engineering’s very energetic and relatively young deputy, says he doesn’t have a huge amount to say about how he’s going to tackle the job yet since 1. Dave Rudberg, the former head of engineering who was doing the job and abruptly resigned two weeks ago, has put all the major pieces in place 2. Peter only found out himself that he’s been named the general manager and hasn’t had a chance to look over the operation yet and see what still needs to be done.
At this point, it largely consists of making sure that city teams are in place to do the kind of work that the city usually does, only for an extra 250,000 people who can’t afford to be stuck in traffic and don’t want to look at overflowing garbage cans. So it’s litter pick-up, traffic direction, signage, snow ploughing and the like.
As Peter says, it’s not at all what he was expecting to do with the next year of his life, but “I’ll give it my best shot.”
He won’t be replaced. Instead, other branch heads will pick up some extra work.
2 responses so far ↓
1 glissando remmy // Mar 25, 2009 at 10:47 pm
From:
“Corrigan: 1, provincial government: 0″
…
“This decision also goes into my file of interesting examples of the way that public uproar and media coverage can actually have an impact on political decisions.
…
I’m looking for examples of where a strong story or media campaign appear to have influenced public policy or pushed politicians into changing their minds about decisions — perhaps for the good, but perhaps also for the bad. I can think of some examples, but what are some that spring to mind for you?”
Frances Bula, March 25th, 2009·
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Frances, this “Pouf! A new general manager for Olympics preparations appears” story is the perfect response to your own request (as per the aforementioned inserts)
See what happens when the City Hall’s senior staff and/or politicians are reading your blog… and the consequential commentaries?
They (Penny & comp) start doing the right thing, which is promoting qualified people from within.
Way to go!
The following rhyme is dedicated to all Vancouver City Hall managers:
“Eenie,meenie, minie, moe,
Catch a Manager by the toe.
Twist and squeeze, do not let go,
They start acting like a Pro!
Eenie,meenie, minie, moe.”
We live in Vancouver and this keeps us busy.
2 T W // Mar 26, 2009 at 7:26 am
A hallmark of any good admininstration is the concept that senior staff are not indispensible and that in a crisis, a suitable candidate can step into the shoes of a departed senior official.
Perhaps the City of Vancouver administration is not quite as stultified as I, and other commenters, have suggested.
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