Victoria Mayor Dean Fortin takes heat for hiring additional communication staff

By Mike Kozakowski • Published on Wednesday, July 29, 2009 • Categorized as Local News, Politics

As Victorians begin to refer to the Johnson Street Bridge replacement as “Fortin’s Folly,” Victoria mayor Dean Fortin is responding to accusations that the hiring of three additional communications staff is a wasteful expenditure of public monies and, on a per-capita basis, unnecessary. Fortin approved the hiring of the new communications staff, at $60,000 per year and bringing the total to seven, in order to communicate road closures and other municipal going-ons to the community. Interviewed by the CBC this morning, it was noted that Kelowna, with a similar population as the City of Victoria (approximately 80,000 inhabitants), has one staff dedicated to this task, and Saanich, with a population of over 112,000, has none. In response, the Mayor insisted the City of Victoria expands to 250,000 people on a daily basis. Meanwhile, on the discussion forum, this raised the need for amalgamation and not additional siloed responses from individual municipalities. VibrantVictoria.ca forum members referred to the interview as “not a puff piece,” and one individual said Fortin got “absolutley roasted.” It was also noted the interview was “overly axe-grindy,” and that the Mayor showed difficulty substantiating the need for the additional staff.

VibrantVictoria.ca forum member “spanky123″ commented on the CBC interview and the Johnson Street Bridge issue, writing, “Dean Fortin is a nice guy but he is in over his head. Now he has taken a position on the bridge and he thinks that he has to follow through or else he will be viewed as indecisive and weak.”

Discussion forum member “Bob Fugger” also mentioned that the City is planning on hiring an additional staff member for “community engagement,” but added that “the irony of this when seeing that [the City is] ramming through the bridge replacement option gave me a case of the howling fantods.”

For more information on this issue, refer to this post. To link directly to the thread in which this discussion is taking place, click here, and scroll down to post #691.