Re: Time to investigate the goings on with St. Albert’s civic administration
I was saddened to learn that the City of St. Albert will yet again lose another member of its senior management ranks. The latest staff lost held the senior professional and technical position within the engineering department that deals with all of our existing and future core infrastructure, water, sewer, roads, drainage, etc. This is the position that was to provide the technical and professional backstop to the recent position gained by one of our city councillors who lacks these qualifications.
The loss of this senior manager is not the only senior management loss in the City of St. Albert over the last three years. While I’m not intimate with all the senior staff losses in the City, by my count the losses include at least six senior managers (department heads, directors and senior managers) in the engineering / planning function and three senior managers in the finance function alone.
While these departures might not impact a burgeoning administration like that in Edmonton or Toronto, they have real and significant impact on a small administration like that of the City of St. Albert. Not only has the City of St. Albert lost strong professional and technical assets, but it has lost civic knowledge and most of all dedicated, hardworking staff – people who went the distance. Furthermore with all of these senior management losses and the questionable recent senior management hire, prospective employees must be wondering what’s going on in St. Albert?
I am deeply troubled by these senior management losses and the most recent city hiring and perhaps council should be too.
While the latest governance philosophy might wish council to restrict itself to setting policy direction, I for one believe there comes a time when you’ve got to look under the hood and find out what that clunking sound is. I think something is broken within the civic administration and it would be prudent to fix it before the entire machine grinds to a halt.
Tom Cooper, St. Albert
