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Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 29 June 2015

We are in the middle of a blizzard of reviews. The Province wants to know our views on our municipalities and how they are run and whether we should change the voting system and much else besides.

Unfortunately, there is no review (yet) of the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act 1996 which spawns the annual Sunshine List. It gives pundits and commentators an opportunity once a year to slag off and berate those working in the public sector. (Personally, I think the vast majority of people in the public sector do a good job and deserve a round of applause.)

These days, the Sunshine List includes many people who should not be on it. Its original rationale – now lost – was to capture the very top earners. So many people are now on it, the list has turned into a form of salary voyeurism allowing nosey-parkers to find out what their neighbour is earning. If we want real transparency then we should publish everyone’s tax returns as they do in Finland.

Frozen since 1996

The $100,000 salary, fixed in 1996 and unchanged since, should now be $142,584 in 2015 – a 42.5% increase when adjusted for inflation using the Bank of Canada’s inflation converter.

There was an astonishing 14% increase in the number of Ontario public sector workers crossing the $100,000 threshold last year. There are now 111,438 public sector workers on Ontario’s 2014 Sunshine List. The average salary of those on the list is $127,178.

Sunshine List and its Anomalies

Despite the huge amount of attention given to the Sunshine List it is shot through with anomalies.

My attention was first drawn to this a few months ago when Newmarket Mayor, Tony Van Bynen, loudly complained to the Toronto Star that they got his salary wrong. The paper subsequently published a correction – revising it sharply downwards from $182,000 to $159,856 but even that doesn’t tell the whole story. He gets about $10,000 a year from a second job with the Hydro that derives from his primary job (Mayor of Newmarket) but that useful dollop of cash is excluded from his remuneration as disclosed in the Sunshine List.

Base salary + Taxable Benefits

Van Bynen gets a base salary from Newmarket of $91,313 plus various benefits such as Canada Pension Plan ($2,425) and OMERS ($14,704) totaling $16,383. The Town recovers $8,794 from the Region of York which represents the Region's share of contributions for OMERs and the CPP. This brings the total to $107,697. Other expenses carried by the Town such as the auto allowance ($6,463) and discretionary expenses such as tickets to events and fuel and vehicle maintenance and so on ($5,381) are quite properly excluded from his total remuneration. (Business lunches and so on are covered in a separate Corporate Expenses category and are, of course, excluded.)

We must now add on to the Mayor’s Newmarket remuneration the $52,987 he gets from the Region of York. (He has a seat on the Regional Council by virtue of his position as Mayor of Newmarket.) This takes his total remuneration ($107,697 + $52,987) to $160,684. But since the Star’s correction gives him $159,856 I must have make some kind of error in my calculations. Still, as from next year, the hydro remuneration will be added to the total bringing Van Bynen up around $170,000.

By any measure, he qualifies to be on the Sunshine List. Indeed, when Van Bynen chided the Toronto Star for getting the figures wrong he gave a revised total which lumped together his Newmarket and York Region remuneration.

A Tale of Two Cities: Newmarket's Mayor is on the Sunshine List but Aurora's Mayor is not

Van Bynen’s next door neighbour, Geoffrey Dawe, Mayor of Aurora, is noticeable by his absence from the Sunshine List. His base remuneration for 2014 was a relatively modest $61,492 with benefits of $17,869 giving a total of $79,361. (Excluded from this total, quite properly, are vehicle and travel allowance ($8,470) and other expenses ($1,830). Dawe’s total remuneration shown above excludes the $55,162 he gets from serving on York Region by virtue of his position as Mayor of Aurora. If this were added it would comfortably put Mayor Dawe in the Sunshine List. (Dawe also gets an honorarium of $3,000 for serving as Vice Chair of the Lake Simcoe Region conservation authority which may or may not account for the difference in York Region salaries for Van Bynen and Dawe.)

The Province really needs to update or, better still, index the Sunshine List threshold so that it doesn’t ensnare more and more people every year, moving away from the original intention. An updated Sunshine List with a $145,000 threshold would exclude the (relatively) frugal Geoffrey Dawe but capture Newmarket's Tony Van Bynen.

In any event, it needs to be clarified beyond doubt that total remuneration from second and third (or more) jobs that derive from the primary job of Mayor should be included in the List.

If it is to have any value, the Sunshine List should allow us to compare apples with apples.

At the moment, it doesn't.

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Details

Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 26 June 2015

Earlier this week, after the Glenway “Lessons Learned” meeting, we were treated to Mayoral waffle of the highest quality. Tony Van Bynen was on top form when he told the Newmarket Era:

“There were some concerns expressed regarding the amount of information released to the public surrounding the fight, and the Town’s ability to purchase the land years ago. However, negotiating strategies do need to take place behind closed doors.”

"It is something that needs to unfold as the dialogue progresses. The rationale for making a decision not to buy the golf course, people still want to know what that was. That’s something Council still needs to deal with, in terms of how that process can be brought forward.”

It is way too late to do anything about Tony Van Bynen. Secrecy is in his banker’s DNA. Openness is as foreign to him as disclosing a client’s bank balance to a stranger.

John Taylor explains the process

In some respects, John Taylor is Tony Van Bynen in training. He loves talking about process and procedure. Take this gem from September 2014 when he was berating the abrasive former councillor Maddie Di Muccio whose husband, John Blommestyn, had publicised the existence of a confidential memo about the Glenway West lands.*

Taylor claimed that the overwhelming majority of matters discussed in closed session are brought into the open, eventually seeing the light of day:

 “…in-camera discussions go through a process and most of them eventually, if not all of them, eventually, come out of camera. You go through a process that takes time and staff review it and they report back to us how to bring it out in its entirety or partially and at what stage… And just to conclude. I think it is important to understand the process and my point is that these things go through a due course. We dealt with something perhaps a little quicker than we used to and that is fine but there is a process we go through for these things and the vast majority come out entirely or partially into the public domain."

Some previously closed material does make its way into Information Reports (which are buried in the Town's website) but the version of events described by Taylor is pure fiction.

The Town’s Solicitor, Esther Armchuck, told me in May 2014:

“Closed session discussions or directions given by Council in Closed Sessions remain confidential unless Council decides to make some or all of those discussions or directions public.”

This begs the question: does this actually happen in practice? Or does the system work by keeping everything in closed session confidential until challenged through a Freedom of Information request?

Declassifying confidential information

There is, in fact, no routine process in Newmarket for disclosing closed session records, say after a certain number of years. Instead, Freedom of Information requests are often used to prise open the oyster and get access to closed session records.

So, earlier this week, I put in a request (as did the Glenway Preservation Association) for disclosure of the minutes and all the records relating to the possible purchase of Glenway golf course by the Town in 2008. I also resubmitted an earlier request from September 2014 which had been rejected.

There needs to be a wholesale review of how the Town deals with closed session matters. Of course, no sensible person would dispute the need for the Town, or indeed any municipality, to have private space to discuss sensitive issues such as buying or selling land. There is provision for this in legislation. But this should not be an excuse for putting a padlock on information indefinitely.

It cheats the public. And information is, in any event, often traded by councillors when it suits their purpose. We are offered nuggets of information on the condition we don’t pass it on to anyone else.

Avoiding embarrassment

The Council can, on its own volition, make all or part of a closed session public and, obviously, councillors will take advice from staff to ensure the legal and financial interests of the Town are protected.

But that is very different from keeping things secret to avoid embarrassing individuals or to conceal inaction or some other failing.

I hear that in the fall the Town will start posting all Freedom of Information requests on line with sections redacted as necessary, making it easier to gain access to information.

This is a major step forward in loosening the grip of secrecy on our Town.

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*You can read the exchange by opening Documents in the panel top left and navigating to Newmarket Documents. Open Debate on Disclosure of Information, September 2014.

Details

Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 24 June 2015

To the Seniors’ Centre in Davis Drive for the much anticipated autopsy on Glenway. The Town spent $588,291 half-heartedly backing the Glenway residents and “defending” the Official Plan but lost, getting a stinging smack on the face from the OMB.

I enter a huge room and see seven or eight round tables with probably the same number of people seated at each. The Mayor and councillors are near me as I walk in and, at the far end, I see the Town’s top staff. I see Bob Shelton, the Chief Administrative Officer; Town Solicitor, Esther Armchuck; Infrastructure supremo, Peter Noehammer and Rick Nethery, the Director of Planning, whose face glows tomato red but will soon darken to beetroot. Marion Plaunt, who handled the Secondary Plan file and did the heavy lifting while Nethery looked on, is noticeable by her absence. She has left Newmarket for another job in Markham.

The brass necked developer is also at the far end, present in strength next to the Town's top staff table. I spot Marianneville’s matriarch, Vice President of Planning Operations, and eminence grise, Joanne Barnett. Sitting next to her is Groundswell’s Brad Rogers with the ever-ready flashing white smile. He is the developer’s eyes and ears. And it is impossible to miss the developer’s calculating lawyer, Ira Kagan. He is dressed for a poolside bar and looks as if he has been out in the sun for a bit too long.

The Glenway Preservation Association people are scattered about in the middle.  The former Chair of the GPA and Ward 7 councillor, Christina “Bulldozer” Bisanz, is sitting with former Council hopeful John Heckbert and tireless tweeter, Lisa the Hoff.

Nest of Vipers
It is an embarrassment of riches. Where do I sit?

With slight apprehension I make for the nest of vipers – the developer’s table. Brian “I take no prisoners” Gard from the GPA asks to sit at the Town’s staff table but is told there is no room.

The professional facilitator, Glenn Pothier, should have asked every second person at each table to move to the table on the right, getting the participants all mixed up. Too many people are in their comfort zone.

Pothier does a good job in setting the scene, focusing on the issues we should be addressing and, generally, keeping things moving along nicely. We are asked to look at the three phases of Glenway: (1) the early days before the Mariannville application was submitted to the Town (2) the period after the developer had submitted the complete application to the Town and (3) the OMB Hearing and denouement. Then he wants us to focus on the future. What could or should have been done differently?

Despite my best efforts, there will neither be streaming nor video record. Pothier will pull everything together and submit a report to the Town. (At the end of the evening I suggest to him that he recommend it be debated at full Council and not just filed away and forgotten.)

The atmosphere is anticipatory in a gentle kind of way. At the table with my new Marianneville friends, I am on my best behaviour. It is jolly enough if slightly strained. Beside me sits Jim, a Glenway resident, my comforting link to the real world.

How much money are you going to make out of Glenway?

At the developer’s table we make some progress and I learn things.

I ask them how much they are going to make out of Glenway given they bought the land for $10 million – small change in the developers' world. I know I have no hope of getting a straight answer but we have been urged by Glenn to say what we think. I am testing the waters.

Kagan tells me profit is a good thing. Money makes the world go round.

Glenway is a prosperous neighbourhood. Middle class and affluent. They put up a terrific fight but still lost. Imagine other neighbourhoods without the strength in depth of Glenway. They would be steamrollered by developers.

I say the planning system is totally broken and needs fixing.

That's why we need some kind of independent planning advisory group funded, perhaps, by York Region with planners, lawyers and other experts, some working pro bono, to help communities face down rapacious developers like Marianneville. Kagan dismisses this. Politicians are concerned about keeping taxes down not putting them up for something like this.

I remind Kagan that he acted for the developers of Slessor Square. And years after the decision it is still a patch of bare earth. Yes, he says. But it’s got a fence round it.

Ruth Victor: the name on everyone’s lips

We spend a lot of time talking about Ruth Victor – the outside consultant brought in by the Town who decided development of the golf course was appropriate.

I refuse to believe that the Mayor and Rick Nethery (and perhaps others) did not sense before October 2013 the way the wind was blowing. They must have known the recommendations she was likely to make.  Kagan tells me I can join up the dots. I feel like the boy at the back of the class struggling with math that others find easy. Now I am talking about the Mayor telling us the Town was defending the Official Plan at the OMB hearing. Kagan is telling me, once again, to join up the dots.

Brad Rogers asks me to believe that development of the golf course was inevitable.

In September 2011, Rick Nethery asked councillors to give the go-ahead to hire an outside consultant “to process any future redevelopment application on the Glenway golf course”.  He said any proposed redevelopment of the Glenway golf course would be a complex matter and his staff was tied up doing other important work.
 
Brad Rogers tells me 69 planning consultancies looked at the papers when they were sent out. But only one took the bait. Ruth Victor. I am invited to believe it was a no-hope assignment. He says redevelopment of Glenway was inevitable.

The Town’s decision not to buy the Glenway lands in 2008

I refuse to accept this. If people had known the Town had considered buying the Glenway lands in 2008, this would have changed the whole dynamic.

Kagan says I place too much weight on transit issues. Yet what the GPA’s consultant planner was asking for at the OMB has, in large part, happened. New amendments to the Secondary Plan – agreed in June 2014 after the OMB had made its decision – broadened the scope of the Master Plan for Upper Canada Mall to include the transportation and transit component that Nick McDonald, GPA's planner, called for when giving his evidence to the OMB. The Go Bus Terminal on Davis Drive could yet move.

I bemoan the absence of a transcript of the OMB Hearing. Kagan tells me it is open to any Party to get one done. No-one did. Not even the Town. It would have been a small fraction of the $588,291 the Town spent and its unavailability is tragic.

We agree that, in future, Town planning staff should be present at OMB Hearings. We have a to-and-fro about the capacity in which they are present (to advise Counsel on planning issues/policies as they arise or whatever) but settle on the principle that there should never be an empty chair.

The Glenway West Lands

Now we are talking about the Glenway West lands. Kagan says he was astonished that the Town did not give consideration to purchasing them. He says the second settlement offer was generous - 57 acres to the Town for $5.5 million, the price fixed for ten years. He is still mystified.

It is no mystery to me. If the Town had accepted, it would have been a wholesale capitulation. The Town would be agreeing with the developer’s plans to build over the fairways and greens of Glenway.

Rogers, smiling again, is now talking about improving communications between developers and communities. What can be done to improve things? I suspect not a lot. And I say so. With Glenway, the gulf was too wide.

I see some other tables having spirited discussions. Their recommendations also go up to the alchemist Glenn Pothier who will distill them into a cogent and readable document, charting the way forward.

What surprised me about the evening

What, if anything, surprised me most about the evening? The silence of our councillors, for sure. I recall listening to Christina Bisanz in 2013 tell a packed meeting of Glenway people at the Ray Twinney Centre that she would lie down in front of the bulldozers to prevent development. At the time I thought “Good on you!” I expected a few words at the very least. She is now as inscrutable as all the other councillors.

What happens to people when they become councillors? They are sucked into a system where information is hoarded. This distorts public policy and stunts the conversation we should all be having about the future of our Town.

When councillors told Glenway people on 25 November 2013 they were backing them at the OMB – and they felt their pain – they had already considered buying the Glenway lands - and decided not to - but no-one knew.

John Taylor, Tom Hempen, Christina Bisanz and Dave Kerwin kept their thoughts to themselves. Former councillor Chris Emanuel is present and speaks often. He tells me too much is kept secret and that should change.

I look at a crumpled Rick Nethery, the Director of Planning, and he too has nothing to say.

Now Glenn Pothier is winding things up and invites the Mayor to say a few words.

I marvel at Tony Van Bynen. He has taken a lot of criticism but he smiles as he rolls with the punch.

He tells us it was a great evening. No finger pointing. We are looking to the future.

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Update on 25 June 2015. Read the Newmarket Era coverage here.

Details

Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 23 June 2015

Newmarket councillors thought about buying the former Glenway golf course in 2008 but – for whatever reason – decided not to.

Years later, the details are still confidential and kept under wraps as the matter was dealt with in closed sessions of the Committee of the Whole on 17 March 2008 and a special Committee of the Whole on 28 April 2008.

This key information will be missing from tonight's Glenway Lessons Learned meeting.

This information was, additionally, never put before the Ontario Municipal Board at its Glenway Hearing last year when the adjudicator, in her written decision, observed:

“There is no evidence before the Board that the Town took any steps to acquire these lands for public open space and public park purposes.”

But now the Glenway Preservation Association has put in a Freedom of Information request to the Town to force disclosure.

There could be a million reasons why the Town decided not to buy. Maybe the owner was asking too much. Maybe preserving open space was not seen as a priority. Who knows?

But clearly there is no longer any justification in keeping this information under lock and key.

Current members of Newmarket Council, Tony Van Bynen, John Taylor, Tom Vegh, Dave Kerwin and Joe Sponga were councillors back in 2008. So too was former councillor Chris Emanuel.

NOTE: The Glenway “Lessons Learned” meeting is being held this evening at the Seniors’ Centre at Davis Drive opposite the Tannery at 7pm – 9pm.

The June 2015 edition of the Town's official newsletter "Newmarket Now!" says the meeting is at the Municipal Offices at 395 Mulock Drive. This is incorrect.

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