Filling city hall vacancies on to-do list

Three department head positions remain open

One of the first jobs for the new city council will be to restock the lineup of department heads at city hall, where there are three vacancies.

The municipality has worked for months without a permanent clerk, finance director or solicitor – all key positions.

“I haven’t seen where we’ve not been able to deliver things to council,” said chief administrative officer Ken Todd, the senior manager for the city.

“You have to remember, through a lot of this time we were in an election period where we really weren’t meeting with council. So it did give us a bit of a break where those meetings weren’t as frequent and we were just carrying on normal business.”

Former finance director Todd Harrison left in May for a similar position at Niagara Region, and city solicitor Ken Beaman retired earlier this summer.

Todd wouldn’t discuss the terms under which former clerk Dean Iorfida departed 18 months ago, in May 2017, other than to say he “left our employment.”

That position was left vacant for so long, Todd said, because

“what I indicated to council was I really did not want to make a decision on that because were in basically full-out election mode.

“And with the clerk’s department, and all clerks departments across the province, that’s probably the busiest time they’ll ever see. So we didn’t want to involve a huge process while we were in the midst of the election planning cycle.”

All three vacancies were posted in mid-August with a closing date for applications of Sept. 14.

The solicitor’s salary range is listed as $124,890 to $156, 112; the finance director’s is $125,990 to $157,487; and the clerk’s is $107,449 to $134,311.

In the interim, Bill Matson has been the acting clerk clerk, Tiffany Clark has been acting finance director and the solicitor’s work has been contracted to Torontobased legal firm Aird and Berlis.

The new city council, elected in October, will be sworn into office Dec. 10 in a ceremony at the Gale Centre. Its first meeting is the next night at city hall, and Todd expects the hirings to go before council early next year.

“Things are carrying on,” he said. “We’ve got some good acting people in the positions and are doing a good job keeping everything moving along. So we’re not in a panic mode where we need to get it done immediately.”