Source: Grimsby CAO Harry Schlange with Former Treasurer, Steven Gruninger
While the revolving door of Municipal Staffing seems to be turning quite quickly at Town Hall, it did come as a surprise to many when Grimsby’s former Director of Planning, Building & By-law, Antonietta Minichillo, left for greener pastures at the Town of Caledon earlier this year.
Council was back in session on Monday night to take in, discuss and “debate” the Ombudsman’s report. It was an interesting meeting to say the least… if you did not watch or do not want to watch, here is a long post of highlights from the meeting.
Monday night means Council night, but not just any ordinary meeting but a “Special Meeting” of Council. The meeting for tomorrow (April 25, 2022) was called to allow more time to digest and discuss a recent “report” from the Ombudsman that was included in last Monday’s agenda.
Queen’s Park has published it’s annual Public Sector Salary Disclosure, better known as “The Sunshine List” for 2021. Last year saw 20 Town of Grimsby employees making over $100,000, up from 19 employees in 2020.
2021 Sunshine List employees at the Town earned a total of $2.54 million last year, including taxable benefits, compared to $2.37 million in 2020. Some of the 2021 earners include former Town employees who have previously been packaged out or were part of the senior Staff terminations that occurred this time last year.
The Town’s top earner and top bureaucrat, CAO Harry Schlange, pulled down $217,824.02 including benefits. He additionally received $306,188.21 in pay and benefits from Brampton in 2021, despite having “parted ways” way back in December 2018. If you aren’t keeping track that is $524,012.23 for 2021… not a bad haul!
While a dollar or $100,000 for that fact is not what it used to be even a year ago, those who “make the list” probably are not complaining.
All the details on the Town’s top earners and other public sector employees can be found in the full and searchable 2021 Provincial Sunshine List at the following link:
In what turns out to be an interesting OLT appeal, LJM Developments was handed an 11-storey development approval by the tribunal. What makes this interesting is that the developer had previously agreed to a 6-storey development with the City.
It all seemed to be going too well, with a Council meeting that despite some heavy consideration of “The Woolverton” looked like it was actually going to be short and largely without “incident”.
Much like the Committee of the Whole meeting of January 19, 2022, the issue of the Discharge of Firearms and Bows By-law brought out a long list of delegates and public attention to the issue at Council on Monday night.
As pointed out in our last post, there has been a big push from the Ontario Federation of Angler’s and Hunters (OFAH) to get its 100K+ membership to “voice those opinions at the next council meeting” of February 7th, alongside with an individual petition to keep hunting in Grimsby legal.
The January 17th 19th Committee of the Whole meeting was long, so long that it wound up pushing the Council meeting until a Friday. The topic-de-jour was the issue of waterfront hunting with an astounding 10 delegations on the issue. If you need a brief history on this topic, please see our previous post by clicking here.
Photo Credit: Waterfowl works llc/Creative Commons
If you haven’t heard the gunshots ringing off the lake, you might have heard about the issue from your neighbours or the local newspaper. The passage of Grimsby’s new Discharge of Firearms By-law back in November left a legal gap, one large enough to drive a boat of armed hunters through.