Major changes at City Hall

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“*The Infrastructure Services department is being eliminated and the divisions within that department are being moved as follows: Infrastructure Delivery (now named Project Delivery) and Transportation & Technical Services are being transferred to the Public Works department (now named Civic Operations). Asset Management and the Infrastructure Planning & Engineering Divisions are being transferred to the renamed Planning, Development & Infrastructure Services department,

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* Staffing in the Environmental Services division has been reduced and staff are being transferred to the Utilities and Development Services divisions.

* Strategic Initiatives & Partnerships is moving to the Planning, Development & Infrastructure department,

* Bylaw Services is moving from Planning and Development to the Community Services & Public Safety department,

* Financial management functions that have existed in both Community Services & Public Safety and Infrastructure Services departments are now housed within the Finance department,

* Human Resources is being renamed Human Resources and Corporate Safety.”

The memo goes on to note that there are employment consequences to the re-structuring.

It reads: “As a result of these changes and the financial gap we are experiencing, I regret to announce that Gina Layte Liston, Director of Public Works, Adam Homes, Director of Infrastructure Services, Barbara Oke, Manager, Environmental Services, Paul Knudsgaard, Deputy Fire Chief, are no longer with the City. Lana Keim, Supervisor of Organizational Learning, will be leaving the City as of December 3rd. Other positions were also unfortunately eliminated.”

Those positions follow the earlier decision to cut Glen Mikkelson and Myles Tycolis’ positions and the decision not to refill the vacancy left by the retirement of Dave Dyer, the former General Manager of Engineering and Public Works.

“A lot of information about our financial circumstances and included in that will be the anticipated gap for this year and next year and the savings that we’ve been able to achieve to date with some of these really difficult employment decisions we needed to make,” says Babicz.

Mayor Lyn Hall says morale is pretty low, given the cloud of COVID and its impacts on the City.

“Morale can be tough. I think it started with the announcement of the pandemic and our operations changed drastically.”

Babicz says the day the memo went out to City staff was a tough one.

“It really was a hard day. One of the hardest in my career. And I certainly hope that we don’t have to experience like that again.”

And it’s not over, the City has re-positioned the Service Centre Manager, Mauricio Plata, to “lead the review of multiple large-scale, cross-departmental processes with the goal of achieving sustainable process improvements and enhanced delivery of services to the public.”