The previously hidden report that the Mayor has finally pulled from the bowels of the Town Hall. His recent wailings and histrionics about the Town’s finances, which coincidentally have only emerged in the election campaign, lead us to ask “Where were you in the last two years?”. Sitting on it and pretending it wasn’t there.

This report dated November 26 2024, read it here, is an internal report from the present Director of Finance – Adam Giddings. “The following report aims to address the pressing concerns arising from the past performance of finance staff within the Town of Cobourg. It outlines the specific issues linked to inadequate performance, including their impact on productivity, team dynamics, failure to adhere to Federal and Provincial legislation and overall municipal performance.”  A pretty hard intro to a report that purports to show that the Finance Department, that he inherited was a ‘rat’s nest’ (our words) of inefficiency, disobedience and perhaps malfeasance. The report identifies, written by Mr. Giddings and conducted “using prior years financial data, current processes and information, existing policies, a review of applicable legislation/regulations and included information, and input from the CAO, Directors and staff involved in the implementation of the annual capital program. Also, consultation was undertaken with the auditors (KPMG) and Watson & Associates Economists Ltd., the consultant for the development charges background study.” Section 4 leads of with a chart that is a high-level summary of the issues identified in the report.

It is a very hard-hitting report written by Mr. Giddings about the situation as he saw it when he arrived at Town Hall. It raises many questions:

• First of all this report is two years old – what has happened in those two years to fix the problems?
• What has the Mayor done in those two years about the follow-up to the report?
• Why would he ask for the release of this report in the election campaign?
• What were his real motives?

The release of this document does nothing to the reputations of the other members of Council, but it is the Mayor’s responsibility to lead, after all they knew what the report was all about – the blaming of the previous administration by a new guy and the actual problems of the lack of policies and procedures that governed the finances of the Town. There is a whole lot of hurt in this document and all who handled it should be called to answer for it. Where was the CAO and senior management in all of this? 

But the real question now is the need for an update do we can see if the new guy, not so new now, has actually made progress in establishing new policies – come on down Mr. Larmer – you are in charge of Policy, and financial procedures with the new people he has replaced the previous staff with. What has Mr. Giddings done about it – he has had two years to do it!

The underlying and overarching question after all of this is simple “Why wait two years to bring this to the Public?”