St. Catharines hiring full-time adviser
Losing long-time MPP Jim Bradley at Queen’s Park is considered such a loss to St. Catharines, the city is hiring someone to build stronger relationships with the provincial government.
The still-to-be-hired government relations adviser will also be working on behalf of the city with the federal government.
The new position will be posted this month and was approved by city councillors during an in camera meeting on June 25 in a 6-4 vote.
“We’ve had a wonderful relationship with the provincial government, having our former MPP working on behalf of the community for a little over four decades and also having ministerial posts,” said Brian York, director of economic development and government relations.
“With the change in government, council chose that this is a good time to invest in a full-time contracted government relations person just to build stronger relationships with our new provincial counterparts.”
Besides developing solid relationships, York said the adviser will be looking for any funding opportunities, intergovernmental or otherwise, that could impact the city.
He said the goal is to have someone hired for the position, which will be added to his department, by the end of September.
The salary, which has yet to be revealed, will be funded through the tax stabilization reserve fund for 2018 and added to the budget in 2019.
Mayor Walter Sendzik said council recognizes it has some major projects still to be completed that require provincial support, including GO Transit, intermunicipal transit, affordable housing and supervised injection sites.
Adding the government relations position was precipitated by the change of government and the change in local representation, he said.
Bradley had been the Liberal MPP for St. Catharines since
1977. He lost the June election to the NDP’s Jennie Stevens, who is now a member of the official opposition after Doug Ford’s Conservative party win.
“Losing a long-time member of the legislature who had more institutional knowledge than pretty much anyone in the city of St. Catharines, and also having now an opposition party here in St. Catharines versus the governing party up in Toronto, it was important that we have a dedicated person on staff who has the skill sets to make sure that we continue our forward moving momentum on these projects by having strong connections to both the provincial and by extension federal government,” Sendzik said.
Sendzik said the reality is that during the years when Bradley wasn’t a member of the governing party, he still had that long history of understanding the bureaucracy.
Sendzik said St. Catharines is one of the only municipalities of its size which doesn’t currently have a government relations adviser. Guelph and Waterloo each have three advisers while Kitchener has four.