Rhino’s Ramblings - Goodbye, Mr Puffalt
By Robert Thomas - Opinion/Commentary
I have no regrets a humble now former city manager Jim Puffalt told Council last Monday.
Puffalt, was giving his farewell speech not just to Council, but to the city’s residents as a whole.
Depending on which story you believe the former city manager is either officially resigning to enter retirement or he is being politely forced out.
Fired if you don’t want to be polite about it.
A tale of multiple visions for Moose Jaw.
Being a city manager is a job rife not just with politics but also one where you can easily become one of the most hated people amongst Administration and rank-and-file city worker as well.
Then there is the Council component where the city manager is the only employee directly responsible to the City’s political leaders.
If those seven people, or rather I should say a majority of those seven people, don’t like you or don’t like which direction you’re taking the city in the chances are you’ll be out.
Being a city manager is not an easy job when it comes to doing what is best for the city, trying to appease Council’s political agendas, meeting budgets and finally dealing with staff.
Administration wise it is a team approach.
If you find people on the team as a city manager, who won’t work with you, or rather do as they like, it isn’t going to be very easy ride.
Often this means the out of step Administration member is forced out and old engineering someplace else.
It can be a cutthroat world down on the corner of Fairford and Main.
Then there are the movers and shakers in the community who do their best to have their financial and political will done from the shadows.
A murky world in Moose Jaw’s case is all about a select group of richer individuals who see the public purse and door to City Hall as their personal playgrounds.
Yes there are the self entitled movers and shakers who lurk in the shadows demanding “their tax dollars” are spent ten times over on them.
People don’t get Rich by spending their own money is my opinion of all of it.
The tenure of Jim Puffalt has been a tumultuous one.
Moose Jaw, believe it or not, to use the old cliché is at a major crossroads.
Somehow, someway, and somewhere in the face of so many other communities we need to desperately shine above all others.
Shine above others in my opinion in a way that doesn’t put the noses out of joint of more than a few cowboys in the community.
It can be a game of Blue Skies and outright lies in an effort to attract needed economic development in what can legitimately be considered in many peoples eyes a big town.
This is a backdrop that the now former City Manager needed to negotiate.
Finding a way for the city to move forward when it comes to what needs to be done.
In a small world with so many others competing for public dollars in what I’m more inclined to say many self entitled in the community consider as their own personal purse.
The Puffalt era was as I told him - and in my opinion - at the final media scrum last Tuesday morning, much better for openness and public encounters than that of his predecessor My Way Or The Highway Matt.
For the first time in what I can personally see as a very, very long time you had a city manager actually having an opportunity to say goodbye to the community as part of a regular Council meeting.
There was no high drama of his predecessor Matt Noble hiring a lawyer and arguing constructive dismissal, or that of Gary McKay where Council unceremoniously dumped him and had local tax payers picking up the tab.
No, for Mr. Puffalt it was in my opinion, a dismissal not based upon the former city manager, doing anything wrong per se but rather he just didn’t fit into the plans of the majority of the seven people we elect to politically run the city.
Puffalt’s tenure as city manager was one that many said wasn’t the most thrifty when it came to expenditures.
Council meeting after council meeting, it seemed there was always an expense coming up, that was not budgeted for and Council was continually being asked to find funding for.
Take a look at what was then called Mosaic Place - now the Moose Jaw Event’s Centre - and how it seemed that Council meeting after Council meeting a new request would come up for funding that was not part of the budget.
This is a facility that was seen as the last piece in revitalizing the Downtown.
It was seen as a saviour for the city but for many others, it has become a financial millstone dragging the City’s finances and fortunes with it.
This past week, MJ Independent learnt, the full extent of the operating subsidy the taxpayers of Moose Jaw have poured into what began its life as the Muliplex.
“In 13 years the City of Moose Jaw has spent $15 million in direct subsidies to what many still call the Multiplex.”
But it’s not just about the multiplex, but rather so so many issues that the City is now facing.
Issues which see the City putting off necessary core infrastructure work simply, because we don’t have the funds to finance it.
As I told Mr. Puffalt in his final presser we have the water coming in from Buffalo Pound but now we don’t have the money to dispose of it.
It’s like Katie the wonder cat, every time I buy her a bag of food at the same time I also have to buy at least one bag of cat litter.
It may be a crude analogy, but it’s one that the outgoing city manager agreed with.
Many of the problems the water system is facing, have now been dealt with at great expense and debt to the local taxpayer.
But now when it comes to disposal, we are at a bottleneck, not because we are at capacity with physical infrastructure, but rather, we are at capacity at what the residential and commercial taxpayers of Moose Jaw are literally able to afford.
In many ways during his tenure, Mr. Puffalt initiated some internal realignment and brought many expensive services usually done by contractors and consultants in house.
It’s something that empire building Administration members may like but at the same time it also comes as an expense to the City.
We are told “savings” from going in-house for many services that there was in fact savings which were reinvested.
A bigger bang for your buck, so to speak, but at the same time you didn’t see your property taxes, going downwards as a result.
It’s been a tough haul so to speak for every day property taxpayers like you and me.
But the same time the question needs to be asked when did this all begin?
It is certainly not during the brief five-year tenure of Mr. Puffalt.
Whether we want to admit to it or not the City of Moose Jaw Mr Puffalt was hired to shepherd and run was a financial mess that if you really look at, it is a mess of our own creation.
Mr Puffalt wasn’t hired to fix it.
In reality the now former city manager was hired to make the best sense out of it and stop it from crashing.
Throw into that the COVID-19 pandemic, and what you had in many ways was a perfect financial storm that the City somehow managed to navigate out of.
Perhaps, if you really think about it, it’s not just Mr. Puffalt’s being much nicer to the media and really ordinary every day citizens that will be his legacy.
But rather in the end what Mr.Puffalt accomplished during his short five year tenure, was try to make peace and sense of a city that in reality is a basket case we all love to call home.
Thank you, Mr. Puffalt for your service.