Ethics and Accountability

I always expect to be held to a very high standard. I find it offensive that the City Administration deems that they need to create a tattle tale hotline internally for the working people of the City while ignoring glaring ethical breaches within some of their own senior staff. Get your own house in order first before you try to hold anyone to a higher standard that works hard below you. That they feel there is a need for any type of tattle tale hotline shows a lack of responsible senior leadership.

I have personally been at Development Appeals Board and at Saskatchewan Municipal Board hearings where one senior City official repeatedly stated knowingly false information, with the City Solicitor in attendance, in an effort to unfairly sway the hearing.

I was further appalled that this same senior official announced in an unmistakable way that they had not always been acting in the best interest of the City of Saskatoon and were in fact avoiding some of their duties to the City at times at the request of a private developer.

I have written numerous times to Mayor Clark to meet in private about this issue with a full recording of the proceedings to let him hear this fact for himself, but the Mayor refused to respond.

I wrote to the Governance and Priorities Committee and the City Clerk’s Office informed me that they would not allow this committee to receive my correspondence at that time.

At a later date, I attempted again to write to the Governance and Priorities Committee and this time the City Clerk confirmed that this had been posted to the City Council web portal for only Council to see, yet no response what so ever has ever come directly back from this Committee and the letter was never posted so the general public could read for themselves what has gone on.

Mayor Clark has previously stated that the buck stops with him. But in fact, he spends a lot of his time to avoid being held to account in any way on real issues.

I would push to remove or limit the Executive Privilege that some City managers hide behind to manipulate the proceedings at external planning boards. I would work to make it career ending for City Managers who present knowingly false information to any official planning board, or to City council. (all situations I have been personally been present to witness).

All letters sent to City Council or the Governance and Priorities Committee or the Planning and Development Committee should be publicly posted and available on the City of Saskatoon Portal. Currently, this is not the case and I was very surprised to find this out.