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Two (or three?) more senior staff gone in Vancouver

June 11th, 2014 · 10 Comments

Word from various sources, including @VancouverInsider, that two more senior staff have departed Vancouver city hall: senior engineer Karyn Magnusson, the person who nobly provided her back yard for the mayor’s demonstration of the new organic-composting system last year, off to UBC, and Dennis Carr, assistant director in housing, gone back to Canada’s mysterious east.

I also heard that Eric Bayfield, also in engineering, quit. Handily, the city’s online staff directory is now helping out with that kind of update.

You are looking for: bayfield
Number of matches: 1

Name Telephone Title Department Email

Erik Bayfield
604-871-6770
Resigned
Streets, Traffic and Electrical Operations

Getting a little difficult to keep track of everyone’s who quit — and not just boomers retiring, but younger people, moving on to different jobs.

Can you help me make a list? I think is started, way back when, with
Melissa Scholefield (head of sustainability group, first senior staffer who left not because she was driven out as part of the old NPA team but suspected by all to have left because of weird working conditions)

Just prior to this group listed above, it was

Scot Hein (also to UBC)
Matt Shillito (back to England)
Vicki Potter (retiring)

There were, of course, various people who resigned right after Vision came in: Jody Andrews, James Ridge, deputy city managers.

Then a bunch of people in the middle

Don MacPherson, drug-policy director
Mike Flanigan, director of real estate services (off to BCHousing, viewed as a particularly big loss for the city)
Marg Coulson, city clerk
Jill Davidson, housing planner
Trish French, senior planner
Ronda Howard, senior planner
Kevin Ramsay, HR manager
Mairi Welman, director of communications (along with a whole other whack of people in communications, including one guy who quit six weeks after he was hired)

I know this list is extremely incomplete — remind me of the others?

Categories: Uncategorized

  • Roger Kemble

    Far be it from me to be obstructive but . . .

    I have been acquainted with the Vancouver city building dept. since 1957.

    My introduction to Vancouver was as project manager with Gardiner, Thornton, Gathe Architects and my first Vancouver job was Riley Park swimming pool, now Percy Norman Rec Centre.

    As I recall, fifty odd years ago, there was no development permit process, or if there was it was essentially insignificant, only a building permit process. (Sustainability was another word for nothing left to lose!)

    Since then I worked on many projects until I left to take on a part time visiting lecturers position at Esquela Posgrado de Arquitectura á Universidad Nacional Autonomus de Mexico, La Ciudad de Mexico.

    I had no projects in La Ciudad but I had opportunities to visit planning friends and acquaintances. At a time the planning office was in upheaval due to advent of mayor elect Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas. Needless to say for a city of 20m+ it had a fraction of a complement and floor area of the City of Vancouver.

    Which causes me to wonder, as I understand it, Vancouver’s planning complement is 160+/- souls. What on earth do they all do all day? Whatever it is it does not manifest to this enlightened observer.

    There has been an urban design office for decades and it has had zero effect on the quality of built environment due to a misunderstanding of what urban design is: i.e. spatial relationships between buildings and at ground level. There is a profound misunderstanding that an architectural qualification suffices for urban design: which indeed it most certainly does not.

    On my arrival in the city, May 1951, DTES was were loggers and sailors picked up their jobs in the numerous employment agencies then indulged a drunken binge before heading of to the bush, or the tug boats, to repeat the cycle.

    So I wonder, without the least intent of being obstructive, what on earth do 160 miss-educated planners, so say nothing of their co-indulgent Hall-ista minions, do all day.

    There is something profoundly unhealthy about constantly speculating on what bureaucrat is leaving or being fired.

    This is Frances’ State of Vancouver blog. Okay, then, let’s talk about the state of Vancouver . . .

    One thing I can attest to, the quality of what the mayor hopes for, a green city, is not going to happen ever on this indulgent tack, not ever, not ever, nor ever or ever . . .

  • Roger Kemble

    PS The results of all that paper work at the hall is a disgrace and more people should be speaking out, especially with the oncoming election.

    In this rugged, he-man, hairy chested, bow legged, beady eyed planning/architecture/ development structure aesthetics are for wimps.

    But the fact is, the reason Frances and her buddies go cycling in Europe is for the aesthetics of the built environment, the intentionally urban designed little spaces and places that we thinq are spontaneous.

    They are not.

    The layout of most European, and indeed Latin, cities came about thru purposeful intent: i.e. Phillip ll of Spain’s Laws of the Indies of which the primary intent was the safe survival of the indigense but also afforded careful attention to the layout of towns and cities and it shows today.

    Frances you are mesmerized by Europe. May I suggest you take a trip to Oaxaca or Buenos Aires (Paris of the Southern hemisphere): you’d be surprised and perhaps being a port city you may pick up some good advice for Thu Hall!

  • Bill Lee

    Bob Mackin reposts the city memo on Bayfield and the new ladder of command in that works depot area, at:
    http://bobmackin.ca/?p=1795

    2 months in the job, eh?

  • MB

    @ Roger 1:

    There is a profound misunderstanding that an architectural qualification suffices for urban design: which indeed it most certainly does not.

    Hear hear!

    The same must be said about the average planner. However, the most mature among them seem to have an understanding about both the built form and open space, and the vast possibilities of relationships between them, and the human spirit.

    Perhaps “urban design” is a melange of disciplines.

    Re: the Bureaucracy. Some of us have worked for years on both sides of the counter. It is an illuminating experience to see the other’s reality, and to have your misconceptions swept away by direct experience.

    Many city planning departments across the country are registering record levels of development applications with little or no increase in staff to process them, or authorization to work overtime to clear the backlog. Hence the delays.

    Some cities exceeded last year’s total development permit value by spring with very little incentive by managers to ask for more funds for additional staff. You don’t hear much about this stuff amongst the bleating and whining about the public sector from people who know little about it.

  • Roger Kemble

    “Some cities exceeded last year’s total development permit value by spring with very little incentive by managers to ask for more funds for additional staff.”

    I do not impugn management MB @ #4 for their lack of management: perhaps there is too much management!

    I contend there is a massive gap in the understanding of planning. That gap is the missing aesthetic of the urban context.

    When I attended SCARP in the early ’80’s the art and beauty of urban design was simply ignored yet at sometime or another everyone traipses off to Europe to admire the boulevards.

    It is a massive gap in urban planning that must be addressed. In Vancouver the gap is ten fold!

  • jolson

    New positions, eliminated positions, vacated positions, changed circumstances, new opportunities. Do we really need more names when there is no one to blame?

  • Vancouverite

    Where is our Whistle Blower at City Hall? Why are the departing so silent? Is the fear of Ballem and Jackson’s long brown-shirted arms so great, even beyond the halls of City? Again I repeat, where is our Whistle Blower at City Hall?

  • Mary

    This whistleblower got blocked by this blogger early on. Gave up on this blog. Things ARE very disfunctional in the bullying, ‘command and control’ environment at City Hall. In additional to the loss of talent who walked out the door, there are others seeking ways out, putting in pensionable time, or worst; burying into the prevailing bullying style of what passes for management. This culture is the key underlying cause of Roger Kemble’s complaints.

  • Mary

    Oops “buying” not “burying”

  • Frances Bula

    @Mary. You were never blocked. I believe you had a few posts edited or removed because you were making extremely personal criticisms about particular people that were libellous. You had many, many posts published here.