Calgary’s newly ejected CEO, Dale Stanway, was handed something very close to a no-win situation, a stacked deck, a listing ship, a bum rap . . . when he accepted his job nearly three years ago.
Last week, Calgary city council officially terminated Stanway’s contract, without providing the public with any specific reasons for the decision. But there have been hints of late that this expensive day (more than $300,000 in severance) was coming.
After a weekend of rumours and closed-door meetings, Calgary’s elected leaders finally confessed that Stanway was a goner. Citing the confidentiality of personnel issues and the risk of potential legal action, no one from the council has spoken about what really went wrong, other than to use general words such as “mismatch.”
But it may as well have been mistiming as well as a mismatching.
Stanway had to wrestle serious issues brought on by previous administrations, starting literally from his first to his last month on the job.
He was only on the job a couple of weeks in February 2001 when the Calgary transit workers went on strike. A couple of weeks ago, a pension mess initiated before his tenure finally wound up: it came to light that someone in the administration neglected to remind council that their 1999 pension increase hadn’t yet been publicly debated and voted on. In between, there was a much-hyped conflict over the development of the city-owned land just east of City Hall, otherwise known as East Village.
Again, the East Village plan kicked off well before Stanway’s tenure. While certain individuals have insinuated that there was a scandal surrounding the development, the deal was killed by city council because they found it was bad for taxpayers, not because of any deceit or a “fiasco,” as one news organization called it. (Fiasco, according to various dictionaries, means “complete failure” or “sudden and violent collapse,” but East Village development plans are still under way. Hardly a failure. More like a bump on the road.)
The original East Village proposal was nixed for many reasons, including: it meant selling off land for half its assessed value, the winning bid was questionable, and one key partner dropped out. Lots of taxpayers money and time were therefore lost.
There’s no evidence that the city bureaucrats were doing anything but what they genuinely thought to be in the best interest of Calgarians, despite what you may have read in the news.
That some of the city negotiators bungled is likely. But if this is the “largest land foul-up in recent memory,” then things are relatively good in Calgary.
Maybe in future, the lesson is that experienced businesspeople who have purchased and developed land for a living (especially Mayor Dave Bronconnier himself) should be heeded more closely when they reject real estate ventures as being outside the scope of what being a municipal government should be.
Regardless, Stanway was handed the unusual challenge midstream, and in the end, it came out that some of the city’s managers, whom Stanway was overseeing, were writing into the agreements financial arrangements without the explicit approval of council.
This fact is probably central to why Stanway relieved four officers of their jobs, including two general managers (the title for the level just below CEO, unlike Edmonton, where GM is as high as a bureaucrat can get).
So while these intrigues and hiccups might have been momentous obstacles, communication was also an issue.
One telling story reveals how he inadvertently put a divide, both literally and figuratively, between himself and the people who employed him.
Two weeks before September 11, 2001, Stanway implemented a new security card system, presciently announcing that security at City Hall was inadequate. The new restrictions gave access only to those pre-approved to get into certain areas of the building, including his executive offices. Immediately it came to light that the aldermen (the Calgary name for councillors) were not permitted into Stanway’s area, adjacent to their own.
The aldermen made a fuss, suggesting that this was typical of an administration that showed disdain for elected officials. Stanway quickly had the access codes changed.
This story is representative because Stanway had foresight and the ability to get things done. But he came across as isolated.
Most recently, he apparently doubled the “bonus” ceiling for the new general manager positions without consulting council first.
A month before that, an audit report threw a curve ball at council when it indicated an apparent shortfall in pension allotments from the city budget. The council was blindsided, calling an emergency meeting on the matter. One alderman said that she had “lost faith in the administration.” And that was before the doubled bonus ceiling came to light.
So if Stanway has a fault, it’s that he had too few allies.
I really wonder if a source of mine in city hall is representative of current feelings. He said that he used to read the e-mail bulletins that Stanway issued periodically to staff, but lately, he had been ignoring them. “I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about most of the time.”
That is a sad sentiment, hopefully not shared by the other 10,000-plus employees.
But it may explain, at least in part, why he did not have the support needed to keep his job.
