Feature Stories

Facing a tough reality

When to leave The fact that so many of our municipal colleagues will be elected soon in elections taking place in many jurisdictions across the ...

Learn More

Who speaks for council?

I was asked recently about the legitimacy of a council member speaking to a community issue on which the council had not yet taken a ...

Learn More

Romance in the office

At this very moment, across Canada, there are a number of instances wherein a relationship is either developing between a member of council and a ...

Learn More

A council's "DNA"

A question frequently heard in the world of local government is this: Why does the council act as it does? This question sometimes refers to ...

Learn More

On being a CAO in Canada

I have long been concerned with the proposition that not only public servants, but also all citizens, are necessarily “independent moral actors.” The phrase derives ...

Learn More

Who evaluates the CAO? (Part 2)

After discussing performance evaluation from the perspective of “why evaluate?” (May 2013); what should be evaluated? (June and July); we turned to the question of ...

Learn More

Who evaluates the CAO? (Part 1)

To recap this series of articles to date, we have examined the issue of a council evaluating its CAO by first considering the question: Why ...

Learn More

CAO evaluation criteria (Part 2)

In the May issue, we explored the question “Can a council evaluate a chief administrative officer?” In the June issue, the focus was on “What ...

Learn More

CAO evaluation criteria (Part 1)

Last month, we explored the question “Can council evaluate its chief administrative officer?” In this issue, we now turn the focus to “What should a ...

Learn More