To the Editor,
Re: NEDC CEO parts way with city, May 15.
Nanaimo’s privately run economic development corporation, funded with public money, has proven it could not run a hot dog stand.
Those who hired Susan Cudahy as CEO did not even have a severance agreement nor probationary period attached to the $135,000 a year job, which offered her a performance bonus of up to 25 per cent of her salary and likely a great expense account.
With her departure, she walks away with more of our tax money.
Any smart employer or labour lawyer would have insisted on a six-month probation period at the very least in a contract. Which leads me to wonder, did she have a contract? If so, was it written by Cudahy or her lawyer with no input from NEDC or Progress board executives who hired her?
If a probation period was included, common sense would say no severance should likely be paid.
Cudahy started her job on Oct. 17 and fled the first week of April when temperatures rose over the hiring of a Toronto website design firm.
That means she worked less than six months. Within what a probation period would have covered.
If her employers noticed things were not working out in that time she could have been let go with no severance.
When private businessmen, who make up the 15 member NEDC board, are administering public money you have to wonder whether the good-bye would have been different if it involved their own money?
Frank Mendelson
Nanaimo