By Pepper Parr
April 11th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
Keeping up to date on the reports the Finance department sends to council means learning something new every day.
There was an item in the operating budget performance report that caught our eye. It has to do with computer software maintenance and the positive variance (which means they didn’t spend all the money they had budgeted) item in budget performance
Former City Clerk Angela Morgan, on the right, explaining to council part of what went wrong with the CRM system. Morgan is now the Executive Lead on Customer Experience.
We thought that the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system that had all the wheels fall off at the same time and had to be sent back for a complete rebuild would have come under that computer software maintenance entry.
Turns out that is not the case.
City Treasurer Joan Ford runs the tightest shop in the city.
Joan Ford, City Treasurer explained that “The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software is a capital project (not part of the operating budget performance report). Capital projects are generally carried out over more than one year. We annually provide a capital closure report to council (the next one will be on the May cycle of meetings). The CRM capital project is not ready for closure at this time so will not be included in the report.”
Which means it will be as much as another 18 months before the project is re-done and then we see a closure report. That’s so far off that we could well be into deciding who the members of the next city council will be.
The screw up with the CRM took place before the current council was elected – before the current city manager was brought in.
James Ridge – CRM mess took place on his watch.
The prize for this cock-up goes to the former city manager James Ridge; he was ushered out the door some time ago.
The problems with the CRM became public when Council members found the CRM didn’t work for them. What no one knew at the time was that Sheila Jones, who was then the city auditor, was writing a report on how serious the problem was. It was a humdinger. Her report resulted in what had been done getting redone and the people who dropped the ball were no longer around to be held accountable.
Most of those who quietly left the city will probably be found working in some other municipality.
That’s the way things tend to work in the municipal sector.
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