St. Albert's new city manager will have a skinnier, more streamlined organization to head up.
At least, that's what interim manager Chris Jardine expects a recent corporate reorganization will achieve. He explained he wanted to get the reorganization in place before a new city manager is hired, allowing the new manager to focus on the bigger picture of running the city.
"I figured if I don't do this now and put it together in a logical format, the new person coming in, they're probably going to take a year or 16 months before they get a feel for things," he said.
Jardine has been acting city manager since council terminated Patrick Draper's contract without cause in May. Jardine is planning to retire in January 2017, and a new manager is expected to be in place by then.
While the reorganization has been in the works for at least two months – it was cited as one of the reasons former finance General Manager Mike Dion was let go in July – Jardine only made the specific changes public earlier this month.
In an email sent to city staff and shared with the Gazette, he identifies the major changes as being at the top level of the organization. Rather than the city manager's office plus six divisions, the city will now have the city manager's office plus four divisions.
The economic development and finance and assessment divisions have been removed and the three departments have been moved to other divisions.
The city manager's office will still include the legal services department but will now also include economic development.
The corporate and strategic services division, headed by Maya Pungur-Buick, will focus on "services to the corporation." Financial services will now be included under this division.
Community and protective services will remain unchanged, focusing on "services to people." Jardine is currently the general manager of this division; his replacement has not yet been determined.
Infrastructure services, headed by Glenn Tompolski, will focus on "services to properties." It will include the newly created department of environmental services.
Finally development services, which will focus on growth, planning and major infrastructure, will still be headed by Gilles Prefontaine.
Jardine said he felt removing some of the top-tier management positions would allow for more resources to be directed towards the middle and lower levels of the organization, making it easier to get work like "pulling reports together" done in a timely manner.
"We haven't finalized all of the little pieces, but we know we have some pressure points we need to apply some resources to," he said.
He said he has heard no concerns about the new organization chart, but rather has heard from several staff members who see the reorganization as making a lot of sense.
Manager recruitment
Recruitment for a new city manager is progressing.
City council met in camera with recruiting firm Conroy Ross on Oct. 12. Mayor Nolan Crouse said he could not provide much in the way of an update on the process.
He did say the process is moving along well, and there's no concern there will be an empty seat once Jardine retires in January.
"Our target, and we're well on pace, is to have the new city manager in place well before then," he said.
