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Ballem’s internal note to staff re Toderian termination

January 31st, 2012 · 43 Comments

From: City Managers Broadcast Account
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 12:45 PM
To: All Staff (COV) – DL
Cc: Corporate Management Team (COV) – DL
Subject: COV Broadcast From City Manager:  City to Seek New Planning Director
Today, as you have likely heard, Council has confirmed the decision that our Director of Planning, Brent Toderian, will be moving on from his post with the city. As you will see from the Info Bulletin, Brent has made many contributions to the City in his years with us and I think we all know that he will have more contributions to make on a local, national and international level to the area of urbanism. Changes of this kind are never easy. It is important that our organizaiton be thoughtful and supportive of Brent and staff as we move through the transition. David McLellan and Brenda Prosken and I will ensure that the work of the city continues and that there is a smooth transition. I want to reiterate my thanks to Brent for all the work he has done on behalf of the citizens of Vancouver over the last 6 years.
Best Regards,
Penny Ballem
City Manager
City of Vancouver
Information Bulletin
Jan. 31, 2012
City to seek new planning director
The City of Vancouver is undertaking a number of strategic initiatives to balance the competing demands associated with housing affordability, economic development, citizen engagement and a broad sustainability agenda.
This work will be guided by major policy directions such as the Regional Growth Strategy, the City’s Economic Action Strategy, the Affordable Housing and Homelessness Strategy, and the Greenest City Action Plan, all of which present new opportunities and challenges.
Following due consideration, it has been determined that it is an appropriate time for a change in leadership in the Planning Department.
Today, City Council endorsed and confirmed that Brent Toderian will be moving on from the position of Director of Planning at the City of Vancouver.
An international search will be conducted for a new director of planning.
Over his six years with the City, Brent has led significant planning initiatives, including the Eco-Density Initiative, the laneway housing program, the Metro-Core Jobs and Economy Strategy, and the Cambie Corridor plan. Brent has also been a national and international speaker in the area of urbanism.
We wish Brent the very best in his future endeavours and thank him for his service to the city and its citizens.

Categories: Uncategorized

  • Silly Season

    So farewell, then, Brent Toderian.

    Builder of plans. But perhaps, not enough ‘bridges’.

  • Bobbie Bees

    Is this email authentic? How can we be sure that someone hasn’t just typed this up and scanned it.

  • ThinkOutsideABox

    So succinct SS, well put.

  • Mary

    I’m a city hauler. It’s real. The telling bits to many of us include “council confirmed the decision”. This is all about the doctor not liking being contradicted or in any way challenged. Toderian’s ability and occasional habit of speaking plainly on issues like density, amenities, the Cambie corridor land prices, etc., was very threatening to She Who Must Call All the Shots. You can bet that we will get a replacement that knows his/her place and how to ‘yes ma’am!’.

  • G. Man

    A very dark day for the city of Vancouver.

    The eradication of one the few remaining vertebrates withing city management cannot augur well for the future of planning.

    The relentless and mindless politicization of the planning department management is almost complete. She who must be obeyed on peril of Obscenities, bullying and other general abuse wins yet another round.

    Congrats to the gutless council for displaying their true colours.

  • Joe Just Joe

    I could always use a part-time job, do I just show up at one council meeting every second week and read out what’s been written for me?
    I’m willing to do that until the next election for the same amount BT will now be getting in severance.
    The unfortunate part for Brent is he’ll be very unlikely to get a private sector job in the same industry within this city and will have to move elsewhere.

  • Morry

    P U S H E D

  • Silly Season

    Here for your illumination, “how it is”.

    All the jockeying, the whinging, the gossiping, the betrayals, the climbers, the destroyers, the winners and losers, inside the Beltways, everywhere. The objective: use and keep your power. Eat the weak.

    the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbzBfNMUWPM&feature=related

  • Morven

    Bad (and very expensive) policy for the news of the removal of a senior official to be widely known (if Ms Bula’s blog is to be believed) well before the actual decision makers have formally made the decision.

    But democratic niceties never seem to deter VISION and the city manager.

    -30-

  • gasp

    Morven that’s exactly what I’ve been thinking ever since I heard the news last night. I have worked in management positions for both public and private organizations, and I have never seen staffing matters handled as badly as this Vision crew and Penny Ballem handles them.

    Any employee can be terminated without cause so long as they are given appropriate notice or pay in lieu of notice. The appropriate way for this to have been handled would have been for Council to have discussed this and then the Mayor to have given Mr. Toderian notice (at least 6 months, given his 6 year tenure with the City) AND have him continue working throughout the notice period or until he found another position. Instead the Mayor and Council rubber stamped an action already taken by the City manager who gives Mr. Toderian one year’s pay and ships him out the door.

    City Council, this is taxpayers’ money, and you’ve cost us plenty with your terrible management skills. If your hand picked (with no process, without a competition) City Manager has so much trouble working with other people, maybe you should get rid of her!

    I haven’t been a fan of the Planning Department or Brent Toderian, but no one should be treated the way this Vision Council has allowed City staff to be treated. This is bad optics, bad management and bad governance.

  • Morven

    We may never know the actual trigger for this event.

    But the key question remains.Did the planning director act in the public interest as a dispassionate professional providing advice to the decision makers. Or did the decision makers themselves not act in the public interest?

    Professionals in a planning department have to carry out the policies set by the decision makers and if there are now dark clouds hanging over the city planning process, then it is really the fault of the decision makers at City Hall.

    While I am not enamoured of some of the policies that Toderian had to implement, I never found he and his staff anything other than pragmatic.

    If Vancouver has risen to the lofty heights of a global city (as VISION and the provincial government endlessly remind us), we as citizens are now entitled to ask just who is driving the urban policy wagon with the departure of Toderian
    -30-

  • Glissando Remmy

    The Thought of The Night

    “Communists believe that as soon as the working class and its allies are in a position to do so they must make a basic change in the character of the state; they must replace capitalist dictatorship over the working class with workers’ dictatorship over the capitalist class as the first step in the process by which the existence of capitalists as a class (but not as individuals) is ended and a classless society is eventually ushered in.”

    But, yeah, but, no, but, yeah, but, no, but, yeah, but, no, but… Vision are not Communists nor Socialists, naah, they are Boutique Capitalists with a closet admiration for the Little Dictatorship societies.

    Brent Toderian will be remembered as Penny Ballem’s Road Kill. Never, till now, in the history of this city, was there a staff cleansing of this magnitude, in such a short time.

    A mere 18% of the electorate put in office a bunch of demagogs, who’s only hidden agenda is their… only agenda.

    In three short years, these people managed to change Webster Dictionary’s definition for ‘Parasitism’ from:
    Parasitism (def): “A form of symbiosis in which one organism (called parasite) benefits at the expense of another organism usually of different species (called host). The association may also lead to the injury of the host. ”
    To:
    Parasitism (def): “Vision”

    Vision’s Civic cleansing is complete!
    Detox 100%.
    All Kosher… on the Western Front!

    To this end, I have the following words for Brent, not my words, but the immortal words of Will The Bard:

    “Alas, poor Yorick!
    I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
    abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at it.
    Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
    not how oft.
    Where be your gibes now? your
    gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?
    Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
    Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.”
    – Hamlet, ACT V SCENE I

    …

    To be, or not to be… sacked by Vision.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHGhJr4q3ec
    That, is the question.

    We live in Vancouver and this keeps us busy.

  • Agustin

    I don’t know the internal workings of City Hall, and so I don’t know the real reason why Toderian was fired but I am disappointed that he was. He definitely brought in some very good ideas, and if nothing else forced others to listen and debate.

    If it was his difficulties in working with developers face to face, then we’re throwing the baby out with the bath water.

    If it was a personality clash with his boss, then it’s disappointing that they couldn’t work it out. It’s a shame to lose talent to personal clashes.

    If it was politically motivated, then that is even more disappointing.

    As Morven says, we’ll probably never know the real reason why he was fired…

  • Morven

    We should be grateful.

    We should be grateful that VISION and Mayor Robinson did not accuse Toderian of being supported in his (Toderian’s) urban policy approach by foreign funded and supported organizations.
    -30-

  • Morven

    The last note should of course read Robertson rather than Robinson. How quickly I forgot.
    -30-

  • brilliant

    I wonder who pulled the mayor’s strings on this one?

  • Sean Bickerton

    While I sometimes found myself on the other side of planning issues from Mr. Toderian, most notably in regards to completion of Creekside Park and the casino, he was always a consummate, professional in all dealings.

    And he was genuine. After months of us meeting with lower-level city planners to work out a possible solution to the park, higher-ups intervened behind the scenes and sandbagged us in council with a completely different proposal. People felt somewhat betrayed, which led to some dramatic moments in the chamber.

    Even though Brent thought he was offering a better proposal and that we’d like it, we didn’t, and it was obvious (and audible) how let down we all felt. To his credit, in front of the Mayor, City Manager and council, he turned around and apologized to us in front of everyone there.

    He earned enormous respect from me that day.

    Personally I wish him well, and hope his successor demonstrates the same professionalism and politesse. S/he will need it to sever the Gordian knot preventing completion of Creekside Park on Lot 9 and completion of the seawall, as part of the final development of North East False Creek.

  • MB

    I’ll nominate this one as the Quote of the Day:

    “Brent Toderian will be remembered as Penny Ballem’s Road Kill.” Glissss 12/01/31.

    We live in Vancouver, and that gives us much to bitch about.

  • West End Gal

    MB @18,
    Second that. I also liked this one:
    “But, yeah, but, no, but, yeah, but, no, but, yeah, but, no, but… Vision are not Communists nor Socialists, naah, they are Boutique Capitalists with a closet admiration for the Little Dictatorship societies.”

    and this one from @CityCaucus today, in a post addressed to Brent Toderian:
    “It takes a Mayor to wear a Kilt, but it takes a Real Man to “wear” a Mayor… and his Costumed Administration.”
    Glissss has too many of those!
    🙂

  • MB

    “I wonder who pulled the mayor’s strings on this one?”

    Pssst, brilliant ….. there are whispers that certain developers had a private word with Pennywise, and she was the one who pulled the string attached to the arm that pulled the lever on the guillotine.

    Is Penny Marie Antoinette to Gregor’s Louis the 14th? Let them eat organic bulgur?

    Brent wasn’t the only planner / bureaucrat developers have complained about in the past. There’s a history of Apparatichik Whispering from corporate donors with every council.

    Seems to me Brent made both project developers and citizens unhappy, and that his underlings were sometimes more knowledgable than he in public meetings.

    But why that should lead to the Tower hasn’t been well articulated.

  • Morven

    Regulatory analysts are very familiar with the term regulatory capture where elected and unelected officials instead of serving the public interest serve the interests of the regulated industry.

    It is a well known phenomenon in the USA and the UK.

    Is it also playing out in Vancouver?
    -30-

  • Guest

    You need at least one or the other –

    Without the citizens you have no votes.

    Without the developers you can’t fund an election campaign to convince the citizen voters otherwise.

  • Bobbie Bees

    You guys are all paranoid. Maybe a firing is just firing. Ever consider that? Every business has the right to hire and fire at will. That’s management’s right to manage.
    Besides, there’s more important things going on. Look at the Pickton inquiry.
    That’s absolutely shameful.
    All those dead women and apolice department that couldn’t care.
    Now that’s something to get workedup about.

  • Max

    I’m sorry, was this memo in Power Point?

  • Max

    @Bobbie Bees#2w3:

    What a lame and shameful attempt at distraction.

    But am truly surprised you didn’t bring bikes and or car accident deaths into as per the usual.

  • Chris Keam

    If you want to censor what people can and can’t say online, get your own blog.

  • brilliant

    Right on cue the usual suspects pedal in to Gregor’s defense.

  • Chris Keam

    I’m defending the right of people not to be silenced in a democratic society. Feel free to argue against this fundamental right if you choose, but don’t drag me into your petty political squabbles and then go a step further and completely misrepresent my remarks.

  • Bobbie Bees

    @Max #25,
    I’m sorry, but this isn’t news.
    The world really isn’t a very fair place in case you haven’t noticed.
    So the city decided that an employee wasn’t working out. This happens in every day life.
    Actually, I’ve seen this happen before when a company changed it CEO. Just about everyone in the office who had been hired by that CEO was shown the door with the proper severance of course.

    And I’ll says this again. It’s nothing to get worked up about.

  • Insider

    To Gellers comment in the other post about Brents final meeting with staff, its true, and has spread all over City Hall. Brents last meeting with the staff was so emotional, tears and anger. He was totally classy and inspiring though, says those i’ve talked to. The department is devastated and demoralized. Many other departments feel the same way, because of the way it was done, and given that Brent was well liked and respected by most staff outside the CM’s office. I’ve never seen anything like what’s going on right now.

  • West End Gal

    Bobbie Bees #29
    What a clown you are !
    “So the city decided that an employee wasn’t working out. This happens in every day life.”
    An employee wasn’t working out? Try two dozens highly ranked managers in three years. All replaced with Vision/ Hollyhock/Solomon connected cronies. Forget the compatibility for the posts, Vision knows it all. All they need are warm bodies, to draw huge salaries for their brethren. You included.

  • MB

    @ West End Gal,

    I think I just figured out who was lovingly washing Sam Sullivan’s van in the City Hall parking lot a few years back.

  • Bobbie Bees

    @MB….. HAHAHA!!!!!

  • Higgins

    MB & Bobbie Bees, what a bunch of perfect hypocrites you both are! We are talking about TAXPAYERS MONEY here, and NOT YOURS, Juz Boy’s and/or Ballem’s private business or personal $$$ stash! Just because they can behave like A..h…s and J…s it doesn’t mean that they are authorized to do so. By who? Not by me! By you? HAHAHA! Maybe it’s time to change the rules a bit… there should be some accountability clause under which they could be kicked out on the spot.
    Paying severance packages to the left and to the right, is like the MOB paying witnesses to keep their mouths shut. And they can’t you know what they do…
    Remember, what goes around, comes around.

  • Bobbie Bees

    Higgins my dear chap, might I suggest that you read Alan Garr’s latest column in the courier. Seems Brent isn’t the sacrificial lamb that he is being made out to be.
    He is a left over from Sullivan’s reign of terror.
    He was given a good three years to prove his worth. It didn’t happen. Are you now suggesting that the city should just keep him on for another three years and pay him three years of salary as this would obviously be cheaper than letting him go with one years worth of severance.
    I would love to see you run a company where you have to keep employees hired by previous management. Good luck with that.

  • brilliant

    @Bobbie Bees 34-Allen Garr defending Vision, who’d of thunk it.

  • Bobbie Bees

    @brilliant #35—– Wasn’t Bill McCreery a candidate for the NPA?
    The reason I ask is this quote:
    “Bill McCreery // Feb 2, 2012 at 4:57 pm

    I am not a fan of Brent Toderian, so his departure, in and of itself, is a positive (also of major concern of course is who’s next and then what?). The supposed ‘accomplishments’ during his tenure some have cited in the last few days: eco-density, laneway housing, CAC’s and the Cambie Corridor are seriously flawed, and IMO, failures with respect to both their premises as well as their execution. I, and others here and elsewhere have previously discussed many of the reasons supporting this conclusion so I will not go into that now.”

    So had it been an NPA sweep of city council last November and had Anton’s cabinet cut Brent loose, would you still be running around in here with indignation?
    Probably not.
    In fact you’d probably be basking in your glory while trashing Brent for STIR and lane way housing and other things. Right?

  • Bobbie Bees

    Mira, I guess your mother never taught you that it was bad form to insult people.

    Bye-bye………

  • MB

    @ Booby Bees + Bill McCreery, actually, EcoDensity was invented in and patented by Sam Sullivan’s office. It originally was an isolated planning policy that came on the heels of City Plan and its largely citizen-led neighbourhood visions.

    Mr. Toderian was plunked down in the thick of ED, but he contorted and reshaped it as best he could. But he didn’t own the plan or its shallow, contrived moniker.

    Before anyone suggests I am an automatic Visionista for saying this, I thought City Plan was an excellent effort, and it originated from then Gordon Campbell’s office at city hall.

    We should continue to build on true neighbourhood planning with every administration that gets elected.

  • ThinkOutsideABox

    MB, there seems to be sentiment from city staff not to continue with City Plan for future planning processes. Any insight on why?

  • spartikus

    I don’t know what the official reasoning is, but looking at the 2005 CityPlan for West Point Grey…we see things such as:

    Take Personal/Community Actions to Assist Homeless People in WPG -> Not Approved

    Maintain Most Single Family Areas -> Approved

    Design Review for New Single Family Houses -> Approved

    Allow Some Cottages or Small Houses on Shared Lots -> Not approved

    Allow Some Fourplexes -> Not supported

    Allow Some Traditional Rowhouses -> Not approved

    Allow Some Courtyard or Carriage Court Rowhouses -> Not approved

    Allow More Low-Rise Apartments (Up to 4 Storeys) -> Not supported

    Allow More Mid-rise Apartments (Between 5 and 12 Storeys) -> Not supported

    Allow New Housing Types on Large Lots -> Not approved

    Allow New Housing Types Around Parks -> Not supported

    Allow New Housing Types to be Scattered Throughout the Single Family Areas -> Not supported

    Allow New Housing Types on Arterial Roads -> Not supported

    …etc, etc. In short and as far as I can tell the residents of WPG would like lots of new services while retaining it’s current density.

    I say this neutrally, but I’m sure you can see that planners charged with increasing density might find the sentiments expressed in this plan difficult to reconcile.

  • Higgins

    Spartikus #41
    thanks for posting that link, that was a very interesting read. Who knew?
    WPG are very capricious people.

  • Andrea C.

    @Higgins:

    “Who knew? WGP are very capricious people.”

    How so, did they approve everything on the list on another day?
    Something tells me those “WGP people” are anything but capricious. They appear to be very consistent and very deliberate. Densification is meant for their eastside property holdings, not where they live.