What Windsor Needs Part 3 - The Dev Tyagi Story

When Dave Battagello wrote his “Revolving Door” piece, about the exodus of senior managers from city hall under mayor Edgar Francis’ watch, there must have been some editors asleep at the switch at the Windsor Star. How else could the article have made it to print? It was no surprise, however, to read Chris Vander Doelen’s response to the item and his attempt to rescue Edgar as if he were his loyal companion.
Since the announcement of the firing of ex-CAO John Skorobohacz there’s one person who has largely been lost in the shuffle; that being Dev Tyagi, former general manager of public works. Why was he let go? What’s his story?

I believe the Tyagi tale is a shared one. What can be written about Tyagi can also be written about a number of other senior management who have been shown the door at city hall.

During the 101-day strike this summer council approved to go ahead on seeking funding to build a sewage retention basin that is much needed by the city to help eliminate effluent overflow into the Detroit River. Windsor is the third largest polluter in the province of Ontario according to Ecojustice.

Unless addressed, the situation is only going to get worse, argues Ecojustice, because climate change is making storms more intense and frequent. Dev Tyagi doesn't dispute that assessment. Windsor's general manager of public works said the city has been expanding the treatment capacity at the Lou Romano Reclamation Plant.

The construction of a $60-million storm retention basin just west of downtown should dramatically improve the situation, Tyagi said. The retention basin will capture storm water overflow, give it primary treatment and then redirect it to the Lou Romano plant. The city needs to build two retention basins to get the problem completely under control as well as spend $450 million to separate storm and sewage lines, Tyagi said.

Compare that to Edgar’s thoughts on the merit of building the retention basin.

“Other cities are putting forward massive projects with vision. Today, here, instead of such vision, we have a receptor sewer project … how does that diversify our economy,” Francis said after the meeting.

More than just having opposing views of what the city needs (although that is a big issue when it comes to the mayor), possibly Edgar was also upset that Tyagi seemed to be overstepping administration’s prerogative and making a public suggestion as to where council should be spending and on what projects.

Instead of addressing the pollution issue, Edgar has allowed it to fester during his tenure as mayor. The overflow problem was first identified by Ecojustice in 2006. And where the Town of Leamington simply got on with the infrastructure improvements, the mayor has instead had his head in the clouds with his cargo village or in the depths of a canal, among other less-than-core side lights.

When Leamington finishes its $40-million renovation and expansion of its sewage treatment plant in late 2010, it hopes to permanently eliminate the dumping of effluent into Lake Erie, said John Tofflemire, director of community services. "The Ministry of the Environment was after us, that's why we are anxious to get the project done," Tofflemire said. "It's environmentally unacceptable to be doing this.”

But the mayor seems to think it’s alright. Interestingly, Tofflemire is another ex-pat Windsorite who left his employment with the city during Edgar’s reign of error.

While attempting to be seen to be tough on the CUPE, and apparently wanting to personalize the strike, numerous times the mayor tried to flex his muscles and endeavored to assert his authority. Changing the locks on the doors at city hall and tabling a No Board report even before the walkout deadline, threatening to shut down the CUPE riverside parade for lack of a permit, and sending managers into a dangerous and grievous situation at the Caboto Club to distribute a back to work protocol moments before a ratification vote, are just a few such instances. However, when the local CUPE headquarters was ordered by the Windsor-Essex Health Unit to clean up garbage on their property during the strike, Edgar must have cringed when opportunity was lost to make more out of it.

Dev Tyagi, the city’s general manager of public works, said Thursday contracted crews would address the issue. As for billing the perpetrators, Tyagi would only say that while “technically we could do it …it’s not an issue we really need to make an issue of.”

Wow. The city paid to clean up the garbage and did not, in turn, invoice CUPE for the service? That statement certainly could not have endeared Tyagi with Francis. And in less than two months, Tyagi for a third time upended the mayor over the post-strike garbage pick-up issue.

The mayor claimed that during the strike residents managed to drop their garbage off at one of the temporary transfer sites, or with a private receiver, at a 70% rate. However, garbage pickup was still behind in September, two months after the end of the strike; and this was after canceling the city’s yard waste pickups. CUPE local 82 president, Jim Wood, estimated the actual amount that was disposed of by residents was closer to 30%.

Wood said Mayor Eddie Francis’s claims that residents managed to deal with 70 per cent of their garbage were inaccurate. “It was more like 30 per cent,” said Wood. “People just kept it in the back and hid it. Unfortunately when you get that long of a work stoppage, it takes a long time to get back to normal.”

And here’s what Dev Tyagi had to say about it.

Tyagi said city garbage crews are running about a day and a half to two days behind regular pick-up. “I know it’s very hard to watch garbage sit on the street but we are asking residents to be patient,” said Tyagi. Tyagi said infrastructure work like road repairing and painting and sidewalk repair will continue but some projects will be delayed until next year. “Basically all things are delayed because of the strike,” said Tyagi.

Pretty damning of the mayor and, no doubt, when viewed together with all the public contradictions of Edgar, led to a frictional working relationship between the two. Also, as John Skorobohacz indicated why he left his position as CAO,

Skorobohacz cited several reasons for his decision to part ways with the city, including growing disagreements with council and weariness from the heavy-handed control of Francis.

I believe that Edgar’s confrontational approach, his lawyerly litigious nature, has led to a drain of knowledge as well as millions of tax dollars from the city’s coffers. Repeated time after time for each person on Battagello’s list of departures. Former University of Windsor business professor, and fill-in CAO for the city, Alfie Morgan concludes it this way.

"In Windsor, I don't see the separation of power," said Morgan, dating it back to former mayor Mike Hurst and continuing with Francis. "The people with power win and ones with less power lose. "If you are not with me, you are against me -- they have to get out of that mindset. There can be tremendous psychological and financial cost to this. All this restructuring, there is a lot of money in that. There is also cost of mistakes unless it's done with tremendous care."