鲍勃·比克（Bob Bjerke）为什么被解雇，这对哈利法克斯（Halifax）意味着什么？

Jacques Dubé worked as HRM’s Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) for just 11 months when he decided to can the city’s Chief Planner, Bob Bjerke.

比杰克（Bjerke）领导该市的规划和发展部门已有大约三年半。他的解雇突然出现，对他或哈利法克斯的居民没有解释。

实际上，在他放手的前三周，比杰克会见了杜贝（Dubé）签到，看看他与新老板的表现如何。比杰克（Bjerke）一直从其他地方获得润感，并希望确保他在哈利法克斯（Halifax）处于坚实的地面。杜贝告诉他他是。但是随后，在接下来的三个星期中，杜贝决定解雇Bjerke。

Of course, high-level managers making six figures do sometimes get fired. Bjerke himself has been fired before, from his position of Director of Planning and Sustainability with the city of Regina. That was right before he got hired as director of housing in Edmonton, and then later recruited to Halifax to become this city’s first Chief Planner.

There’s a difference in how Bjerke was fired in Regina and how he was fired in Halifax. In Regina,城市老板立即提供了一个解释，让Bjerke离开，，，，citing a desire for “a change in leadership, a change in direction.” It’s not much of an explanation, but one thing it has going for it: transparency. The message signalled to the city there was a change afoot.

在哈利法克斯，我们没有得到这样的考虑。

CAO Jacques Dubé and city council have not given even the most basic public justification for the sudden firing of Bjerke, citing privacy issues. So we are left asking: Why did Bob Bjerke get fired and what does it mean for Halifax?

Bjerke’s plan to modernize Halifax planning

众所周知，Bjerke受到尊重和喜欢。对于我与之交谈的每个人，包括开发人员在内，射击是一个完全惊喜。直到今天，许多计划人员根本不知道为什么他会被解雇。

Some people I spoke with had criticism of Bjerke. He could have communicated more (with developers, of course). The changes he was making didn’t happen quickly enough, or they happened too quickly.

我们可以肯定的是，Bjerke不能是完美的。我们还知道他的工作并不容易：改变过去几十年来这个城市的规划和发展方式。

在工作三年半的时间里，Bjerke产生了影响。他制定了一项为期五年的战略计划，以“现代化”计划部门，并在实施该计划中进行了一半。他恢复了创建过程区域中心计划，，，，now council-approved and waiting to be translated into an actual municipal by-law. He pointed out the glaring need for a transportation plan, and then brought in former director of transportation planning for Toronto, Rod McPhail, to head up the internal staff team that would get it done. (Almost, I should say. Originally planned for February 2017, the综合移动计划现在，预计将于12月5日进入理事会委员会，最终将花费比原先预算的20万美元，尽管Bjerke表示，对于这个规模的项目而言，额外的费用并不是出乎意料的。）

Bjerke还是HRM即将到来的（手指交叉）的领导Green Network Plan，，，，which promises to define and protect the city’s parks, natural reserves, and green spaces.

Since Bjerke arrived in 2014, city hall has been investing heavily in long range planning and operational reforms, but those efforts are still very much balls in the air, and Bjerke’s sudden dismissal is reason to worry that some of them might get dropped.

The modernization of the planning department is probably the least understood (publicly) part of Bjerke’s job, though it’s a major part of what he was brought in to do.

“在我离开的时间点，”比杰克在11月初见面时告诉我，“我们已经走了一半，也许还有一些五年的计划，可以完全改变申请过程。我们正在人员配备。我们在部门内的30个职位描述中重新分配。”

Bjerke’s department looks after everything from development applications big and small, to by-law enforcement, to animal licenses. “We were really moving through a process, which is what I was brought in to do, to look at all of that and figure out how to make it run better,” said Bjerke. “The regulatory documents, the processes… basically what had been there pre-amalgamation had still been there. So we really had to modernize what we had.”

And then along came Jacques Dubé

Bjerke说，当新的Cao JacquesDubé于2016年9月雇用时，该过程减慢了。

“That work had been going forward and was picking up momentum, and I think most of that came to a halt about a little over a year ago,” said Bjerke. “Things became much more challenging to get done inside the city administration with the arrival of one person,” he continued. “By and large, things carried on, we still managed to get projects done. It’s just that the support, direction… We lost some pretty key energy.”

Bjerke说，杜贝的新方向“非常不一致，非常基于控制”。“实际上，它的申请减慢了两到三个月的速度。”

In December, a few months into his new job, Dubé sent around a memo requiring reports coming from committees and community councils go through the CAO’s office, meaning one more bureaucratic stop for even hyper-local planning considerations.

Dubé also required that the legal and financial departments review all reports before they go to Regional Council, though that rule has since been relaxed.

几个月后，杜贝（Dubé）宣布，他将摆脱CAO副地的职位，CAO职位已由前一年以“代理”身份填补，由HRM的公司和客户服务总监简·弗雷泽（Jane Fraser）“表演”。

Bjerke公开批准的批评是来自主要的开发人员，他们抱怨在市政厅处理开发应用程序的时间表。但是我与之交谈的一位开发人员说，哈利法克斯实际上与其他城市相比非常有利。无论如何，事实证明，自杜贝（Dubé）加入以来，CAO的办公室实际上已经为那些处理延误做出了贡献。作为特里斯坦·克利夫兰（Tristan Cleveland）在地铁上写道，，，，“Halifax has over 150 staff reports pending, a quarter of which are overdue, and things are getting slower. On Oct. 17, council had one of the shortest meetings in memory for lack of reports.”

如今，杜贝（Dubé）最近宣布了内部搜索“ CAO高级顾问”的内部搜索。

Bjerke认为他不可避免的进度的延迟：

Everyone in there is going to do their best to continue doing their job. It’s just with the gap that gets created — it’s disruptive. There was a real program that was moving forward that’s going to get put to the side. You can’t help but have that, because that’s going to be affiliated with the work that I was doing to sort of modernize the department, to get faster applications, more clarity, more public involvement. All those sorts of things as far as anyone can tell, and certainly in terms of the feedback I’ve had, were what council wanted to see, and what ultimately the community wants.

Derailing progress?

It’s possible that Dubé is not intentionally planning to derail the progress Halifax has made in long-range planning and procedural reform to date. But the signs aren’t good.

First of all, it’s been three months since Bjerke was fired and there’s still no replacement for him — the city has yet to even put out a call for recruiting firms to work on finding a new Chief Planner (though I’m told staff are currently preparing a request for proposals).

当他解雇Bjerke,杜布主要高级删除management support that had been powering everything from the Centre Plan to the Argyle Street streetscaping project. If Dubé, as he stated in his email announcement to Halifax staff in August, was planning for the vision “embraced by the Mayor, Council and myself,” to “continue to be embraced,” then why on earth hasn’t the city at least started to find a replacement for Bjerke, three months later?

Secondly, there’s the latest development debate at council, in which未经请求的CAO报告asked council to reconsider a previous planning decision, against the previous recommendations of the city’s own planning department.

The debate was not about a new development proposal, but rather one that has already moved through the process and been approved to go to public hearing: the Willow Tree tower proposed for Robie and Quinpool.

一些背景：两周前，第三次理事会在柳树十字路口考虑了拟议塔的高度。自首次提议以来，工作人员一直建议最高高度为20层，因为这是尚未编码的中心计划的方向。2016年9月，理事会驳斥了这一建议（与议员瓦茨，尼科尔和梅森反对），并允许一座29层的塔楼进行。Six months later, after a motion from local community council, a newly elected city council reconsidered, and decided the tower proposal could proceed to public hearing but would need to max out at 20 storeys.

快进到本月。理事会11月14日会议的议程上有一个来自CAO办公室的信息项目，传达了Willow Tree网站开发商George Armoyan的一种反宣传。该报告详细介绍了当前的中心计划启发的20层的高度限制如何在Armoyan上无法经济上工作，但他有一个反击：他愿意将原始的29层高度降低至25层，前提是他也是允许将所需的单位最小尺寸缩小25％。

通常，信息报告通常就是出于信息目的。与其他员工报告不同，信息报告通常不包括向理事会的建议部分，并且信息报告通常不会将其纳入主动理事会会议议程。

Dubé’s information report on the Willow Tree, however, contained the distinct language of recommendations: Councillors could either do nothing, and their previous decision would stand, or, if they were “persuaded by the building economics position put forth by the applicant [Armoyan]… then they should direct staff to prepare amendments to the proposed MPS.” (It’s interesting that Dubé wrote that the position put forward in his report was “put forth by the applicant” — who’s working for who here?)

Councillor Shawn Cleary took up the CAO’s call and moved to rescind council’s previous decision, ignore the direction set in the Centre Plan, and add five storeys to the Willow Tree tower height.(Item 13.1 in meeting video.)Ultimately, his motion failed to get the two-thirds majority needed to overturn a previous decision.

Council does not appear to be changing course on planning direction, even if senior management is.

这一切都提出了一个问题：高级管理层如何在没有理事会任何方向的情况下改变方向？

“Interesting, ironic, and challenging”

Bjerke cited his alignment with city council as a point of pride. “I think that’s what’s interesting, ironic, and challenging,” said Bjerke. “This doesn’t seem to be a case where council is on one side and planning direction that I was giving is different. They seemed to be incredibly well-aligned. There’s always going to be differences of opinion and opinions of different councillors, but it’s pretty hard to point to something where what council wanted was different.”

It’s possible Dubé doesn’t know he’s changing the city’s course. He was a hands-on city manager in Moncton — for example,personally taking over the management of the city’s mega-concerts right before they tanked— so perhaps he is just being hands-on with the planning department, with the intention of continuing to embrace the direction we’ve been going, but just not doing it well.

But it’s hard to imagine that Dubé really believes that firing the Chief Planner —at the eleventh hour for so many major planning projects — was the thing that would help further the goals the department had been painstakingly reporting on and consulting over for the past three and a half years.

“很多繁重的举重”

The concern, according to Bjerke and confirmed by other development industry types I spoke with, is that the work that has gone into something like the Centre Plan (or the Green Network Plan or the Integrated Mobility Plan) actually goes “stale” if not implemented in good time.

And regarding the Centre Plan in particular, Bjerke said “there’s a lot of heavy lifting” to come, what with the next step of writing a completely new municipal bylaw that will capture the ideas in the approved plan.

“It can’t just be on the side of somebody’s desk,” said Bjerke of the Centre Plan. “That’s what’s been challenging with HRM in the past, and one of the changes we made in the department was to create dedicated teams to look after these big projects, to make sure they were resourced adequately. You need to get through the process in the right window because the technical information, the public consultation, all of that stuff gets stale if you don’t finish it.”

然后，由于如此著名但无法解释的解雇，可能会对现有（和未来）员工产生令人不寒而栗的影响。Bjerke说：“您可以期望想要改变，冒险，做新事物或不同的事情的人希望保持低头。”“这只是一种理性的方法，这就是组织的运作方式。”

“Every one of those projects were at pretty critical stages,” said Bjerke, “and need, honestly, council’s support, and as these things have moved forward they’ve had it. And for the people working on them, it’s important to know that their backs are covered, that they’ve got the trust in what they are doing. It’s not easy work.”

与旧的和……旧的？

那么中心计划有什么危险呢？在比杰克（Bjerke）的看来，以及我与之交谈的其他人的意见。这甚至不是关于计划的细节，而是简单地having该计划 - 一致，现代的计划 - 终止许多开发商和城市规划者习惯的临时开发方式。

“Halifax has a real history,” said Bjerke, “especially on the peninsula, of dealing with things as one-offs. They are all ad hoc. You can look at possible development on a site and come to something that maybe makes some sense, that you can do something with, but that is different than understanding what’s going to be in the broader interest.” He continued:

那么，实际上适合一个框架，您的过境将是什么？It’s a sort of strategic shift from that smaller “we’ll do things one-off because we are hoping for development” mindset, to setting the bar where you are going to get good development that really does contribute to the broader success in the longer term. Which is what the Centre Plan, regional plan, and all those sorts of bigger documents are about.

It’s better for development, and economic development, to have the bar set higher. When you know that a high quality development is required, then you also know that the development that goes in next to yours is going to be of higher quality. If it’s ad hoc, you don’t really know what’s coming next.

It’s important not to just deal with individual projects, because you can firefight on individual projects and get down into the details, and all that means is you will always have to do that. When you can fix the system overall that’s where you can make the progress. And as I say, we were about halfway through doing that.

The way city hall has acted under Dubé over the three months since Bjerke was fired seems to indicate that continuing the process Bjerke started is not in the cards.

It could be that the culture of how buildings get pitched, negotiated, and approved in this city is just too engrained, and the resistance to change too strong, to accept Bjerke’s reforms. Or it could be that those reforms simply lost the support of the city’s top administrator, just 11 months into his job.

当然，旧方式的惯性似乎已经赢得了胜利，但是一切皆有可能，尤其是在似乎支持改革的民选议员中，即使他们不支持改革者。