nfitz said:
By keeping slaves and raping their spouses?

What does the ancient past matter ... I'm hard-pressed to think of a city with over a million people that doesn't have route numbers/letters. Is there a good example, and can you explain why it works better in that city?
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Way too serious there... salsa was on the ball in the following reply.
 
From The Star, at this link:

TTC fires managers of over-budget Spadina subway extension TTC CEO Andy Byford said it was time for a change.

The TTC has fired the two managers in charge of the over-budget, delayed Spadina subway extension.



The system's chief capital officer Sameh Ghaly and chief project manager Andy Bertolo have left the TTC, according to a memo issued to staff by CEO Andy Byford about 2 p.m. Thursday.



The departures came a week after the Toronto Star revealed that the six-stop subway extension to York University is expected to cost $400 million more than its $2.6 billion budget.



“After careful and lengthy consideration, I have determined that a change in leadership within the engineering, construction and expansion group, including the Toronto York Spadina Subway Extension project, is necessary,” wrote Byford.



The subway, which was originally scheduled to be complete in 2015, is now not expected to open until 2017.



A report to next week's TTC board is expected to outline the options the TTC is considering, including possibly opening the subway only as far as York University to begin.



TTC spokesman Brad Ross said there would be no further comment on a personnel matter.



“The CEO felt a change was necessary to move this project forward. It's been a difficult thing,” he said.
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Of course, those on the very top, while this was going on, were let go (okay, half of them at least. There is still one Ford left) back in October.
 
W. K. Lis said:
Of course, those on the very top, while this was going on, were let go (okay, half of them at least. There is still one Ford left) back in October.
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...sigh....

The TTC Board is appointed by the counsel at large, not the mayor. Prior to the election the Board consisted of:

Maria Augimeri (Chair), Maureen Adamson (Vice- Chair), Raymond Cho, Josh Colle, Glenn De Baeremaeker, Nick Di Donato, Alan Heisey, John Parker, James Pasternak, Karen Stintz, Anju Virmani

The Chair ran for the NDP, Cho was a NDP candidate, Colle is the son of a Liberal MPP, Baeremaeker was a David Miller supporter, Parker was a PC MPP, Pasternak is part of the mighty middle and Stintz has no love lost with Ford. Maureen Adamson, Nick Di Donato, Alan Heisey, and Anju Kumar Virmani are citizen members and as such I will not question their judgement one way or the other.

So blame it on the Board which was not Ford dominated. (and management)

These Board members should have been monitoring the largest TTC project at each Board meeting with updates on the budget. When the Board minutes came out I always saw procurement documents but never any status report on budget to actual. Of course this could have been in camera and we never would have seen it.

But the Board should be monitoring this. This is part of their fiduciary duty to their shareholder, the city of Toronto. let's hope they were.

The people still on the Board that should be asked to resign by the City for this huge problem are:

Chair - Councillor Josh Colle (yes, he got promoted for spending $400M of our money)
Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker,

I would also suggest that there should be some finance experience on the Board...a chair of an audit committee of a public company or something similar...who can demand the correct reporting from management.
 
muller877 said:
The people still on the Board that should be asked to resign by the City for this huge problem are:

Chair - Councillor Josh Colle (yes, he got promoted for spending $400M of our money)
Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker,
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In reports to the board up to to December 2014, staff still declared that the project was on budget, despite the delays.

As such, it's difficult to pin too much on that board. They weren't the ones to approve the project in the first place either.

Shouldn't we be waiting to here exactly why it was over budget?
 
TheTigerMaster said:
So are these two the fall guys, or are they actually responsible for this mess?
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Both. On a project of this scale, it is ludicrous to pins the problems on only one person. No single person has that much power.

However, as a manager, you do bear responsibility, and should expect that you might have to fall on your sword one day.
 
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It's not just about these two guys, it's about a larger problem in the public service of accountability for results. There's a certain sentiment that it's impossible to get fired. This is as good a way as any to send a message.
 
Its a problem I saw back in 2003/4 when I first started to attend TTC meeting. It was very clear after a few months that Management was weak, the commissioners useless, the chair refused to hold staff feet to the fire to comply with Commission requested. Staff was very good for reinventing the wheel at every turn at a greater cost than buying something tested and on the shelf.

The TVM are a prime example that cost over $100,000 each to build that couldn't use a credit or debit card, yet you could buy one with all the bells and whistles for about $65,000 US. The chair made that same statement.

A huge number of management have already put in 25-30 years of service and will get over $100,000 when they retire or fire.

The 2 getting the sack should have been let go years ago from my very conversations with them as well listening to them talk at TTC meeting.

Andy was thrown in to the fire thanks to Ford when he fire Webster and he still trying to get his head around a number of issues that were in place before he came on board.

The City hands aren't clean either, as they are great for mismanaging projects in the first place with no accountability at all. Can we say St Clair, Fleet and QQ??

Over the next few months, a fair number of retirement will take place, as well people being shown the door.
 
it's partially for show, Ghaley was only a year and a half on the job and Bertolo ready to retire.
 
A long time back I was ranting about how the project needed a more transparent process for reporting results against spend. It's quite normal for a project to be able to "look" on track if some costly items get delayed and the cost doesn't hit the books on time. in fact major projects may appear underspent for a while if the original timetable was unrealistic.

For the Board reports to have been so positive for so long requires a fair degree of internal "collusion" because there are supposed to be internal and external independent auditors watching like a hawk and asking tough probing challenging questions about the numbers as they unfold. Either those hardnosed overseers were muzzled, or they didn't perform diligently and courageously, or they didn't exist.

The blame for this has to sit at all levels. Normally the oversight reports directly to the Board so that it is truly independent from management and can't be schmoozed. So the Board's Audit Committe should be on the hot seat. So should the CEO ad the CFO....they effectively swear to the reporting, and clearly those reports were not factual. So should senior Audit staff and senior Project staff, since both are accountable for respecting the oversight process.

That's a longwinded way of saying that this kind of surprise resukts from undisciplined management culture, rather than one or two screwup bureaucrats. The top leadership is in question when this happens.

- Paul
P.S. : Toldyaso :)
 
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