City Hall Rewards Failure
In 2016, the general manager of NGPR (Natural Gas and Petroleum Resources) produced a business plan called
Return to Profitability
It states
“Proposed NGPR Business Plan and support for NGPR to spend up to $30 million for Growth Strategy purposes in the 2017-2018 budgets to generate new income sources from oil and gas field discoveries....It is recommended through the Administrative Committee and Energy and Utilities Committee that City Council directs NGPR to: a) Adopt the proposed NGPR Business Plan and in particular pursue the addition of new high return oil and gas assets to the portfolio through an Organic Growth Strategy. These assets would be added through a focused exploration program through 2019 with yearly progress reviews...”
In 2017, an NGPR business plan proposed -
Growth Strategy Invest up to $45 million over 3 years (2017-2019) in exploration and drilling to further evaluate the deeper potential in the general CMH area.
Strategy will be re-evaluated after one year
I never saw any yearly progress reviews, did you?
They searched for a jackpot and found nothing. In 2020 in a seemingly desperate attempt to mitigate the millions and millions of dollars loss they started selling off our assets (more on this in a future post). All together, NGPR spent about $45 million over three years. They found no jackpot.
Was this manager fired or demoted for such poor performance? No.
Did the yearly reviews mean they stopped spending? Nope
After CAO/City Manager Bob Nicolay returned to Medicine Hat Oct 2018 (his SIL was hired Jan 2019), this guy got a promotion July 2019. (See August 29 blog post entitled Unqualified at City Hall? for all his promotions) He is now Managing Director of Energy and Infrastructure only answerable to Bob Nicolay.
2017 Energy & Utilities Committee Members Councillor P. Turnbull, Chair Councillor J. McIntosh, Vice-Chair Councillor J. Turner
We cannot “Stay the Course” when we’re driving into a ditch. The Old Guard must go!
#ngpr #managingdirector #bobnicolay #staythecourse #kelly4mhcc #oldguard #sil #energy #utilities #drivingintoAditch #philturnbull #jamiemcintosh #clugston #jimturner #tedclugston #yxhmayor