NPCA interim leader burning bridges

“The NPCA didn’t get this way overnight. We can’t fix it overnight,” West Lincoln Mayor David Bylsma said recently, asking for the public’s patience as a new board tries to deal with the many issues affecting the conservation authority.

He’s right. It’s going to take a long time to repair the damage — much of it to reputation — caused by the former overseers of the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority.

Bylsma, the new chair, and his fellow members on the new board have their work cut out for them. And they don’t have to look far to see what is their biggest obstacle: he sits at the board table with them.

The conduct of interim chief administrative officer David Barrick lately has been contrary to everything the NPCA needs to do to repair its standing in the community.

When he recently went before Niagara regional council last month, he wouldn’t — or couldn’t — account for $2.5 million of the NPCA’s $8.87-million operating budget for 2018. Pressed for details, he basically told councillors that if they wanted more information they should have come to the NPCA’s budget meeting.

“This is not a request for approval,” he said of his presentation. “All the detail was provided at length and in depth at the budget committee, which is public, and at the board level.”

Irritated councillors said all right, no money until you provide more answers.

“All of my questions have been asked and avoided,” a frustrated Port Colborne Coun. Barbara Butters said that night.

Apparently not satisfied with burning bridges only in Niagara, last month Barrick was a no-show when the NPCA and other conservation authorities attended a budget presentation for Hamilton city council.

The other conservation authorities sent their CAOs; Niagara sent its regrets.

Rather than attend himself, Barrick sent acting corporate services director Greg Furtney to represent the NPCA. Apparently no explanation was offered.

Furtney, who had been on the job only a few weeks, did his best to answer Hamilton councillors’ questions.

“It was disrespectful,” said Brad Clark, a Hamilton city councillor and one of that city’s representatives on the NPCA, of Barrick’s absence.

That did nothing to soothe relations between the agency and that city, which have been strained since the NPCA unilaterally adopted a new funding formula that increased Hamilton’s yearly bill by nearly $1 million, back in 2015.

All that, and earlier this week someone at the NPCA phoned police to complain about a Facebook post that called Barrick a “poison pill” inside the agency and “one of the worst bully boys on council during this term.”

An agency spokesperson said Barrick did not make the call. And Barrick doesn’t return reporters’ phone calls, so we couldn’t ask him directly.

It’s fair to wonder, though, would anyone at an agency like the NPCA call in the police without first informing the boss, in this case Barrick?

Sadly for the hands-on staff at the NPCA who continue to do their jobs managing the watershed and conserving nature at locations across Niagara and Hamilton, the agency’s name has become synonymous with mismanagement, poor judgment and, in some people’s opinions, much worse over the past four years.

Bylsma’s correct, it will take time and good management to reverse that and restore the NPCA’s good name in the communities it serves.

David Barrick needs to either step away, or at least step back, for that to happen. His conduct reveals him to be either supremely arrogant in his perception of his role, or stunningly tone-deaf to the anger the community has for the way the NPCA has been run.