Toronto hires away Hamilton’s city manager

Thestar.com
June 27, 2018
David Rider

Toronto has poached Hamilton’s city manager to take the same job on a much bigger stage.

Chris Murray, a 56-year-old former planner known as a soft-spoken problem solver, will become Toronto’s city manager on Aug. 13, leading a 34,500-member workforce and facing a civic election, a host of thorny issues and an unpredictable new Ontario government.

Toronto’s new city manager is Chris Murray, shown in 2014, who has served as Hamilton’s city manager since 2009.

Murray has been Hamilton’s city manager since 2009. He was unanimously approved by Toronto council on Wednesday upon the recommendation of a selection committee that interviewed multiple candidates.

Mayor John Tory told councillors that Murray displayed an understand of issues facing the city, including transportation and mobility, housing, inequality and diversity.

The new city manager is also committed to ensure different parts of Canada’s biggest municipal government work better together, Tory said, “to have kind of a collaborative team effort to get more things done as opposed to what we’ve often seen which is this kind of dispersed, silo-dominated thing that just bogs down decision-making and causes us to not achieve all the things people expect of us.”

Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon, a selection committee member, said Murray showed himself to be “a big picture guy, but he also gets in the trenches ... He’s calm and Zen but he can be tough, and of course he needs to be tough to deal with us at times.”

McMahon said it is important to her that the new city manager live in Toronto and not just commute.

“He did mention that he would do that -- he would not sell his home but he would look at moving here. He loves Toronto” and said so many times, McMahon said.

The city manager is the prime point of contact between the bureaucracy and the mayor, the mayor’s office and councillors who set the policies that civil servants implement.

Murray will have a big influence on the information and advice given to politicians on pressing issues such as the cost of refugee claimants in city shelters, pedestrian and cyclist deaths, the city’s shaky long-term finances and transit plans including the Scarborough subway expansion.

He will also be the touch point between Toronto and his provincial counterparts in Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government, which will be sworn in Friday.

The low-key, conciliatory Murray was a surprise hire for Hamilton, getting the top job over more senior city bureaucrats. In 2009 he was known for stickhandling a $245-million parkway through an environmentally sensitive creek valley

The project had divided city voters, spurred protests by environmentalists and Indigenous residents and even resulted in a years-long lawsuit against the federal government.

In the top job he burnished his reputation as a quiet compromise negotiator and political tightrope walker, navigating bitter debates including the location and construction of a Pan Am stadium.

In 2015, 30 Hamilton rank-and-file city workers were fired for “time theft” after being tracked by GPS and surveillance video. But union protests led to an arbitrator’s ruling that saw many of the workers reinstated.

“Measure me against what I’m doing and what I’m going to do about these things,” Murray told CBC at the time. “I think we have the right answers in place and that’s the path we’re going to be on.”

He leaves Hamilton with the fate of its signature transit project -- a 14-kilometre light rail line fully funded by the province -- on a political precipice. Alternatives are expected to be highlighted in the Oct. 22 municipal election even though Metrolinx has spent $100 million and relocated residents.

Murray replaces Peter Wallace, who left Toronto last spring last spring after less than three years to become secretary of the federal Treasury Board.

Last year Wallace earned just over $350,000. Murray earned almost $270,000.