Unless I have amnesia, one of my new year’s resolutions for city hall was to practice more transparency, and like all new year’s resolutions, it’s been cast to the side and left forgotten by the end of January.
It was with some above-average interest that I attended this month’s Transit Advisory Committee meeting, which, even at the best of times, exists as little more than a sounding board for the direction staff is already taking anyway.
The reason this meeting interested me was because of an item welcoming transit’s new acting general manager, meaning something was happening to the permanent one. Robin Gerus introduced TAC to Glenn Marcus as his successor and announced that he was retiring. The day after the meeting, Friday, was going to be Gerus’ last day at Guelph Transit, “And then I have a week’s vacation and then I’m going to go off and have some fun,” he said.
It seems that Gerus’ definition of retirement “fun” though is doing almost the exact same job he’s been doing for more than six years just 1,300 kilometres east of Guelph…
Oddly enough, this is not the first time that the general manager of transit suddenly up and left for Halifax. Gerus’ predecessor Mike Spicer took up the job of manager of transit operations in Halifax in 2018 just 14 months after signing up to be the head of Guelph Transit, and Spicer took that job after his predecessor, Phil Meagher, disappeared in the fog of night as the city executive talked vaguely about making a “change in leadership” in order to “move forward with some of our key initiatives.”
Feeling lied to about Gerus’ intentions I reached out to city staff last Friday for clarity. In an email to CAO Tara Baker, Deputy CAO of Public Services Colleen Clack-Bush and Gerus, I asked them to circle the square about how Gerus is retiring by taking a bigger and more high-profile job in the same field in an entirely different municipality halfway across the county.
“The City does not comment on personnel matters, or the status of any individual’s employment as that is confidential,” Clack-Bush wrote back in a brief email.
“My intention was not to mislead anyone, but my employment status is confidential, and I have confirmed that my using the term retirement is appropriate for my personal circumstances,” Gerus said. “As you may be aware, it is not, uncommon for people to retire from one organization and then choose to pursue another opportunity.”
He’s right, it’s not uncommon, but let’s be clear: Gerus is not going to Halifax to paint clam shells on the beach. According to the job posting for executive director of Halifax transit, Gerus’ new role as of this coming Monday morning will see him responsible for managing a $130 million budget that includes 400 vehicles and five ferries.
By comparison, the 2025 operating budget for Guelph Transit is nearly $46.5 million, and while I’m not sure these numbers are up-to-date, the Canadian Public Transportation Database, a kind of Wikipedia for public transit in Canada, says that Guelph Transit has a fleet of about 100 different buses and a total of zero ferries.
In other words, Gerus is now going to manage a transit system that’s four times as big and more complicated because of the management of aquatic vehicles, and this is his idea of having “some fun”?
I mean, fair enough, but I think when most people in the community hear the word “retirement”, they think about sleeping in, reading more, taking a cooking class, spending more time with kids and grandkids, or other leisure activities. They don’t think, “Hey, what if I take my current job and add boats?!”
I will give Gerus the benefit of the doubt when he says it wasn’t his intention to mislead, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t being misled. In the TAC meeting, one member of the committee offered their congratulations to Gerus and talked about their mother’s own positive experiences in actual retirement, none of which involved running transit in the largest urban centre in Atlantic Canada.
When someone says they’re retiring, there’s a certain expectation about what that looks like, and in no one’s estimation does that expectation including taking the same job in an entirely different place. Maybe that’s Gerus’ idea of retirement, but if we were to gather 10 people at random on the street would they agree? Especially people who are living a world where the idea of real retirement is a pipe dream.
While Gerus stretches the definition of retirement, the people of Guelph are left again with a situation where a high-level manager has left a high-profile position under a cloud of suspicion.
Why did Gerus say “retirement”? Why not say, “Hey guys! I’ve enjoyed my time at Guelph Transit, but a real great opportunity came up and I want to challenge myself,” because a) I feel like I’ve done all I can here, and/or b) I’ve always wanted to live out east, or something to that effect? Why have a cover story if there’s nothing to cover up?
And while we can appreciate that matters of human resources are confidential, the City of Guelph has to acknowledge that these are public roles meant to serve a public good and simply saying “no comment” is not acceptable. If a manager is retiring because a spouse or significant other is sick, or if they’re brunt out and looking for something simpler, then that’s fine, but if someone is a manager here one day and a manager elsewhere the next, “no comment” is a failure to disclose.
You don’t need to actually cover something up for it to look like a cover up, and that’s what the City of Guelph and Gerus have done with this announcement. If your policy is to not talk about confidential human resources matters, don’t put them on a freakin’ public agenda and then don’t clam up when someone points out the inconsistency. There are real questions here, and the people deserve real answers.
I wish Gerus good luck in Halifax, he was decent manager on transit matters here in Guelph and seemingly a decent man, but the Gerus shaped hole in the wall at city hall now is going to need some serious masonry to repair.
Assuming, of course, anyone in the building gives a damn about fixing it.