On replacing a position, not a person

There are possible implications and undercurrents to this story of Brockville Police Chief John Gardiner's looming retirement, things I cannot discover without NSA tactics not accessible to me.

There are, however, other things that are glaringly obvious.

And again, one can see it by parsing a sentence.

This time, it's in the police services board's statement Tuesday announcing the chief's retirement.

“The board is in process of formulating a plan to determine a replacement for the position of police chief,” it noted.

Not a replacement (“successor” would be a better term) for the police chief, but for the position of police chief.

This wording is either clumsy or deliberate.

In fact, it's likely both. When the board sits down to talk succession, it will come up with a temporary replacement for the position of police chief.

Given the narrow budget increase the police board is promising city council for 2014, common sense suggests Brockville won't actually have a police chief for a good chunk of 2014.

The Commentariat is already going on about how the outgoing chief was “blindsided” by Mayor David Henderson's initiation of the Ontario Provincial Police costing.

It makes little sense to ask a new chief to enter such a situation willingly.

With that costing only months away from Gardiner's May 31 retirement, it would make little sense for the city to hire a new chief, at a full chief's salary, who could be called upon to retire by early 2015, with the appropriate package to boot.

The budget, then, likely calls for an interim chief to be hired from within, effectively downsizing the police management by one and putting in place a structure that can be cemented should the next council reject the OPP proposal.

Some conclusions can only be reached through an active spider sense. Others, such as this one, are simple math.