An assessment of Mayor Jeffrey’s performance so far
Saving a city, especially a large one, is no easy task. But that’s the daunting mandate that Brampton Mayor Linda Jeffrey was given when voters in 2014 swept her into office with a landslide victory. But, as many CEOs can tell you, cleaning up a mess takes time.
Halfway through her four-year term, Jeffrey is still dealing with the fallout from former mayor Susan Fennell. But the recent dismissal of some 45 managers, including many at the top of the city’s bureaucracy, has sparked hope for real change in Canada’s ninth-largest city. Here is a subjective look at Jeffrey’s performance so far: The $28.5-million lawsuit
Almost six years after a local developer filed a $28.5million lawsuit against the city, alleging wrongdoing by Fennell and senior staff in a $500-million down- town redevelopment deal, the issue still hangs like a dark cloud over city hall. The city denies all of the allegations in the lawsuit.
While veteran councillors Elaine Moore and John Sprovieri have publicly questioned the deal and the conduct of staff who were directly involved, Jeffrey has called it a “distraction.”
The lawsuit stands to potentially damage Brampton’s reputation and, earlier this year, city lawyers launched a motion to have the case dismissed. This strategy was abandoned last month, after more than 19,000 pages of documents were filed with the court by the plaintiff.
The plaintiff’s filed court documents include critical testimony by councillors, damning allegations by the city’s former chief administrative officer and other documents that can now be used against the city if the case gets to trial. No matter the outcome, the city could be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs spent on its abandoned legal strategy. Jeffrey continues to show little leadership on the issue. Grade: F Management restructuring
Shortly after becoming mayor, Jeffrey had a run-in with former chief administrative officer John Corbett, after he ignored her request for a management salary freeze in 2015. Jeffrey’s anger over the matter seemed out of character for the usually reserved, even stoic, mayor. But it underscored a disconnect between senior staff and council and the grim prospects for progress at city hall. Later on the day of their public run-in, it was announced that Corbett was no longer with the city.
Jeffrey, along with council, hired Harry Schlange in the spring to lead city hall. The mayor referred to him as a “change” agent. Schlange promptly dismissed 45 non-union staff, including many of Brampton’s most senior managers.
Nothing has been released publicly to suggest Jeffrey had any direct involvement with Schlange’s moves to reshape city hall culture, but she gets credit for being the head of council, who called for change and helped begin the process. Grade: B+ University bid
Jeffrey gets mixed reviews for her work to land Brampton its first university — it is the largest city in Canada without a university presence. She struck a panel shortly after getting elected to help the city in what was expected to be a competition between Brampton and Milton for a single university that the province was planning to award to only one of the two municipalities.
Jeffrey appointed Bill Davis — the former Ontario premier — to head up the panel, but after almost two years, council complained it didn’t know what the panel had accomplished. In the fall, with Milton far ahead in its plans, Jeffrey surprised councillors when she suggested about $15 million would be needed in the 2017 budget to help with the university bid.
After residents and councillors began to question how the push for a university was being handled, the Liberal government (Jeffrey was a Liberal cabinet minister prior to becoming mayor) made a surprising announcement that both Milton and Brampton would get a university campus and $180 million to help.
But now, council and residents are openly questioning how much of the $180 million will come to Brampton, who the university partner will be, where it will be located and how the city will find money to build a campus. Grade: B- Policing
It was a challenging year for Jeffrey and her Peel police service board colleagues, as they battled with police Chief Jennifer Evans on several fronts. Jeffrey voiced some of the strongest opposition to the continued practice of carding, known in Peel as street checks. During a board meeting earlier this year, she called a report supportive of street checks brought forward by Evans “offensive.” She described it as “supporting the status quo.”
Jeffrey also threw her support behind a sweeping equity-diversity audit of the force called by the board. Grade: A Overall mark: C+ Jeffrey’s comments on her performance on these files
“It has been a year filled with opportunities and challenges. Our new CAO Harry Schlange implemented a significant organizational and leadership restructuring. In October, the province announced that Brampton would be the new home of a university campus. This was a historic moment for Brampton. We still have much work to do to rebuild the public’s trust with the Peel Regional Police and the Peel Police Services Board. I ran on a platform of accountability and transparency and that is why I and other members of the board welcomed a third-party evaluation through an equity and diversity audit.”