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 with the bureaucracy that was in place. 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 to help land a university partner and secure the province’s selection. 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 with the expansions. 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 dynamic 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. While Jeffrey was not as forceful as board chair Amrik Ahluwalia and Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie on some issues surrounding policing reforms, she 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. In response, Evans and some of her officers sent letters to the board taking issue with the way they said the board handled the issue.

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.”