Harry Schlange is gone! Harry was the chief administrative officer for the City of Brampton — the city manager. As of Dec. 12, he and the city parted ways, as the mayor said, “effective immediately.” Harry became city manager on May 30, 2016, and he filled the role for 30 or so months. His departure is sudden and without further comment.

Brampton has had six city managers in 10 years. A few have been acting or interim, but others have weathered city council and after two or three years, all have departed (except the most recent appointed December 2018). The city manager is the boss of Brampton staff and reports to council on the activities of all departments. While it is not well recognized by city council, most city managers operate on the second-removed principle, which separates staff from directly reporting to political bosses but holds them responsible for city staff actions, inaction and bad actions.

Folks might be asking themselves why Brampton doesn’t seem to be able to keep city managers (the exception: 2007-12)? Well, maybe the answer lies in the lack of knowing where Brampton’s going — a vision for the future. City council is supposed to be the visionary policy-maker. City managers are not supposed to do that job. But if your council has been at war with itself over the past 10 years, public policy is difficult to formulate, or through neglect policy is sometimes invented by city staff in an ad hoc way.

City managers are supposed to carry out policy and help develop responses to economic circumstances or public issues presented by the people or other levels of government. So the onus is on city council to adopt a co-operative simple vision and build strong policies for the future. And if they don’t know how, they need to learn that art!

In the past 10 years, many city managers have tried to carry out sometimes conflicting policies. They've tried to formulate strategies while dealing with financing growth, harmonizing the industrial/residential ratio, affordable housing, transit, roads, welfare, sewer and water, waste disposal, health and hospital care, infrastructure maintenance, public health and political representation. But if the pace of growth outstrips the ability to cogently plan for the future and changing senior government directions make responding difficult, then both the city manager and the city council have to find a way to develop a relationship that serves the people.

When they are searching for the next city manager, city councillors will need to look for a person who has good listening skills, can learn fast, has the capacity to work hard and has a big, strong heart. That person will need wide experience in the Ontario municipal field, sufficient academic background to understand the complexities of modern government and be able to get along with others. Those talents are crucial!

The city manager’s job is not for the faint of heart and if they have all those attributes, the successful candidate will earn $321,996.56 plus a benefit package of $16,679 (2017). One suspects, when each of the city managers was hired, Brampton council thought they were getting that full package. Apparently they weren’t!

Terry Miller is a longtime Brampton resident and former Peel Region and Brampton City councillor. The Scene column appears weekly in the Guardian.