Following a Toronto Star Story that also appeared in the Hamilton Spectator, Arvin Prasad, the city\u2019s General Manager of Planning and Economic Development is now on administrative leave.<\/p>\n
The Star story alleged that Prasad was operating a consulting business while employed as Commissioner of planning services at his previous post in in Markham and he was \u00a0collecting consulting fees from a developer who had \u00a0a zoning matter before council. The Star story reports, Prasad \u201cinvoiced more than $140,000 for consulting work to Grit Developments between December 2023 and March 2025. During that time, Prasad endorsed a zoning request to allow the same developer to build an industrial complex on agricultural land that includes a historic farmhouse that has been designated a heritage building.\u201d Through a lawyer, Prasad denied any impropriety when approached by the Star.<\/p>\n
The city of Markham is investigating the allegations which were made by Prasana Balachandran, who has also provided the city with nine invoices allegedly between Prasad and the developer. The Star was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the invoices.<\/p>\n
The Bay Observer approached city Manager Marnie Cluckie for comment and received a statement from the city reading in part, \u201cThe City of Hamilton is aware of the allegations involving a City employee related to matters that reportedly predate their employment with the City of Hamilton. The City takes allegations of this nature seriously. We are committed to maintaining a workplace grounded in integrity, accountability and ethical conduct, \u00a0consistent with the expectations and responsibilities of public service. \u00a0While the City cannot comment on individual personnel matters, we can confirm that the employee has been \u00a0placed on administrative leave to allow the appropriate time for fair and equitable processes to unfold and to support all parties involved.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following a Toronto Star Story that also appeared in the Hamilton Spectator, Arvin Prasad, the city\u2019s General Manager…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[16564,17,4955,2948],"class_list":["post-38553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-arvin-prasad","tag-canada","tag-markham","tag-toronto-star"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}