Disarray in Montgomery administration
The disarray at CDN-NDG borough hall is suggested by even a quick skim of the Gazette account and the TVA account, portraying an administration in chaos. How it started and who’s to blame are difficult to discern.
Blork 10:08 on 2020-03-10 Permalink
I feel like we’ve been reading about administrative disarray in NDG for at least 20 years.
Kate 12:21 on 2020-03-10 Permalink
Trying to think how to write (however briefly) about that mess made me realize I don’t even know whether it’s the borough mayor who’s supposed to bring order, or if not, who, given how Sue Montgomery was ejected from Projet over a report from the city comptroller general.
And then I thought, maybe there’s some fundamental flaw in the relationship between city and borough. The borough system was cooked up, after all, on the fly, to assuage people left dissatisfied after the city merger-demerger mess (2002-2006) sparked by PQ meddling. Onetime independent suburbs were turned into boroughs, but then new boroughs were ordained from chunks of the city that had had their own organic lives but now found they had to act in concert – Cartierville and Ahuntsic, NDG and Cote-des-Neiges, and Park Ex, Villeray and St‑Michel, cobbled together to make bureaucratic units.
The wonder is that, on the whole, it seems to work, but it shouldn’t surprise us that in CDN‑NDG, once steered by Michael Applebaum, fractures are now showing. This is, after all, the borough where a senior manager killed himself after UPAC interviewed him in 2013.
walkerp 13:44 on 2020-03-10 Permalink
I actually found the clearest explanation in The Senior Times of all places. Unfortunately, it’s not on their website, but you can download a pdf of the print edition. Check the article on page 5. Their take is that it’s the bureaucrats stonewalling. If that is the case, the really disturbing question is why Mayor Plante is coming down so harshly against Sue Montgomery. You have to wonder what pressures are being brought on her. Very disturbing, because it suggests corruption, which I really hoped/thought Plante was not connected to.
Ian 14:51 on 2020-03-10 Permalink
The Senior Times has actually been giving really good coverage to this issue – in depth, with lots of background the larger news outlets seem to be glossing over. I found this recent editorial very enlightening, too: Projet Montréal disappoints in failing to support Sue Montgomery
Mark Côté 16:10 on 2020-03-10 Permalink
It reminds me of those old British comedies, Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister, which were all about the clash between the long-tenured unelected officials and the transient elected ones. Except this is much less funny. As both a proud NDGer, a proud (at the time, at least) Projet voter, and a friend of a friend of Sue Montgomery, this is profoundly confusing and disheartening.
Jack 18:32 on 2020-03-10 Permalink
Yeah the kiss of death for any elected official in dealing with a career civil servant.
“After touring the building, I realized it could not be saved. I asked for a professional audit of the building and the senior bureaucrat told my chief of staff we should have the result of the audit in August and that there was a contract.
It turned out there was no contract, and there was no audit. He tried to blame an underling, and I said, ‘No, it’s your responsibility’,” Montgomery recalls.