Time to Make a Decision for Taxpayers and Local Businesses, Mr. Mayor

The Newmarket Era, (and pretty much everyone else), has been reporting on 77,000 jobs created in York Region since 2009 but just 100 of those were created in Newmarket.  York Region is reporting job growth at a combined annual average rate of 2.8%.  Newmarket over the same period of time?  Just 0.03%.


When the Town's neighbouring municipalities are seeing their economy grow by 57 jobs every time Newmarket adds just one, you cannot blame the global, national or provincial economies.  To take an overused axiom and give it a twist:  It is the LOCAL economy, Stupid. 


So what is our LOCAL government going to do about it? 


In 2009, the Town of Newmarket created a new position called "Economic Development Officer and hired Christopher Kallio to get our local economy going again.  Here is a summary of what taxpayers paid him to accomplish this:


Year          Salary         Raise Percentage
2013          $120,091    1.1%
2012          $118,751    2.7%
2011          $115,598    2.3%
2010          $112,985    8.3%
2009          $104,343    -


To summarize, over this period of time Mr. Kallio received $571,778 in salary and was rewarded an average pay increase of 3.58% each year.  Over this same period of time, while our neighbouring towns were growing their economy, Newmarket was stagnant. 


I once had a boss who had a very simple formula for dealing with underperforming employees.  During the first 6 months of under achievement, fire the under achieving employee.  If the problem persists beyond six months, fire the manager of the under achieving employee for not dealing with lacklustre performance. 


Mr. Kallio has not only been allowed to continue in his job (paid for by you and me of course) but his managers have actually rewarded him salary increases each year that he has been with the Town.  What signal does that give to the employees of the Town who are giving their best performance day in and out?  How demotivating it must be for hard working employees to see this man, one of the Town's highest paid employees, being rewarded each year by upper management for delivering such terrible results! 


Keep mind that the cost to you and me is not just his salary.  Mr. Kallio's office will have other costs associated to it.  He is spending money on Main Street (from the last budget, approximately $160,000 was 'granted' annually to Main Street businesses with no benefit to our economy).  He lead a junket to Finland and Estonia to lure investment (with nothing to show from it).  It would not be hard to imagine well over $1,000,000 has been spent over these five years by the Town of Newmarket to create jobs with no results. 


The facts are laid bare.  The decision must be very clear.  The time is long over due for the Mayor to do what is right for taxpayers.  In the next few days, I expect the Mayor to admit to the failure of the Town staff to create jobs and fire those who are so ineffective.  Not only should the Economic Development Officer be let go, but also too the man he reports to, CAO Bob Shelton, for allowing this under performance to continue while businesses that could have meant significant opportunities for Newmarket decided to locate in Aurora, East Gwillimbury, Markham, Vaughan, and Richmond Hill instead.