It’s not formally announced yet, but one more body is about to be added to the crew at 12th and Cambie — former journalist and recent B.C. Liberal candidate Robin Adair. He’ll be handling “intergovernmental relations” and, for the time being, communications — something that Laurie Best was doing until recently, but she’s being moved over to head up online and web stuff, I’ve been told.
Adair hasn’t started his job yet — start date is yet to be announced, but I’m hearing that he’s being brought in so that the city has some kind of formal staff channel to talk to the provincial government. For the last decade, the city’s staff connections to the province have been maintained in a kind of ad hoc way. Various departments each had their own links to people in Victoria, while city manager Judy Rogers could always call her former boss, deputy premier Ken Dobell.
With Rogers having been evacuated from city hall — or whatever the current euphemism is for fired/replaced/dumped — and various senior people retiring, the new crew wants a designated hitter in place for calling Victoria. Hence Adair — interesting choice. Also interesting: the previous designated hitter for intergovernmental stuff was Brent Humphreys, now departed from the mayor’s office and doing, I think, some kind of contract work. But Adair will be a regular staffer. Hmmm.
I don’t know much about him, so all informative comments welcome.
(BTW, some of this news got leaked previously to the NPA’s attack team, citycaucus.com, while I was still away, which did not at all make the mayor’s team happy. Lots of talk of heads rolling.)