The Town of Huntsville is in the process of restructuring its senior management team. It will go from five directors plus the CAO to four directors plus the CAO, while also realigning the departments that they are responsible for. While the plan is expected to improve operations, what it will not do is decrease the impact on taxpayers.
Council has been holding closed session restructuring discussions since October. It passed a resolution at its closed session meeting in December, directing staff to post an updated organizational chart on the Town’s website by January 31, 2017.
“We’ve sort of flattened the structure a little bit,” explained Huntsville Mayor Scott Aitchison, who also noted that the “executive” in all titles has been dropped “because I think we’re not big enough for that kind of a ridiculous title,” he said. “It won’t actually save us much money. I think it’ll probably cost a little more money but we’ll have fewer directors at the end of the day.”
Part of the impetus behind the plan is to realign and improve the operation of the Town’s various departments, explained Huntsville CAO Denise Corry. It is also expected to alleviate the CAO’s workload, who is not only responsible for the administration of the municipality but is also the Clerk and Director of Corporate Services. That’s because when former CAO Kelly Pender left the municipality in March 2014, Corry, who at the time held the positions of Clerk and Executive Director of Corporate Services, was also appointed as the municipality’s acting CAO. She was eventually made the official CAO, after the current council took office on December 1, 2014, but continued to also hold the positions of Clerk and Executive Director of Corporate Services.
When I was originally appointed, the mayor and I had talked about that, about having multiple roles and I said I absolutely was up for the challenge and would give it a go. So I’ve done that for a couple of years but what I found, because there are so many things that need to be done within each of those areas, is that I really wasn’t able to give 100 per cent to my role as CAO for the Corporation.
Town of Huntsville CAO Denise Corry on the need for restructuring the town’s senior management team
Aitchison agrees. “She needs to be focusing more on the strategic direction type stuff that we need to be working on and projects that council has identified that are important to them,” he said, referring to issues related to the creation of more affordable housing and taking back District roads at the local level. “Right now she’s spending too much time dealing with the clerk’s department and the treasurer and finance and all that kind of stuff and that’s not really her role, so this is the proposal she gave us.”
The restructuring plan calls for promoting the current Deputy Clerk to Clerk and hiring a Director of Corporate Services – the position is currently posted on the Town’s website. The successful candidate will be responsible for the clerk, finance, IT, communications and marketing departments and, like all other directors, will report to the Town’s CAO. He or she will be paid between $106,000 and $119,000, plus benefits.
Once the overall restructuring plan is rolled out, the net additional cost to the taxpayer in 2017 will be just over $25,000 in unallocated funds, according to Corry. That’s because while the municipality will be adding a new director it will also be eliminating two other director positions from its six-member executive team, currently comprised of the CAO, the Director of Community Services, Director of Development Services, Director of Protective Services, Director of Transportation Infrastructure and Director of Human Resources and Corporate Information.
The restructuring will merge the positions of the Director of Protective Services and the Director of Transportation Services into one position: Director of Operations and Protective Services. That director will be responsible for overseeing public works, fire, parks and cemeteries. The restructuring will also eliminate the Director of Human Resources and Corporate Information position. The departments that report to that director include IT and Corporate Information, which will be transferred to the new Director of Corporate Services, while human resources will be looked after by a manager who will report directly to the CAO. “Human capital is one of the largest things that we deal with, so it only makes sense that HR continues to report to the CAO,” said Corry.
She said the plan will result in some positions seeing wage increases, while others getting decreases. In the end, Corry said that the restructuring plan will cost the municipality roughly $120,000 more this year. But she said a plan has been hashed out to mitigate the impact on the Town’s draft 2017 budget, which is currently sitting at a proposed tax hike of 6.92 per cent. She said the impact the restructuring initiative will have on this year’s budget in funds that have not yet been allocated is an increase of just over $25,000, rather than the full $120,000. The remainder of most of the increase will be absorbed by charging the wages of the Town’s Engineering Technician to the Town’s capital roads budget.
“So we’ve taken the wage of the engineer and we’ve funded it through capital because if we didn’t have capital projects that position wouldn’t be here,” said Corry, who noted that it is a common practice within a number of other municipalities. “It is fair to say that yes that cost it still collected through taxation, but it is already what’s being contributed to the capital plan. As you know, council is looking at contributing an additional $400,000 per year to fund capital roads projects, so we can build our capital plan.”
When asked what the impact of the restructuring would be beyond 2017, Corry said: “So this is a four-year budgeting plan and again it gets a little difficult to discuss some of these numbers because it was done in closed session and it does pertain to certain positions, What I can tell you is there’ll be just over $25,000 applied to the levy and it is anticipated, based on the current staffing levels, that there will also be an additional cost in 2018, which cannot be disclosed at this time.”
Corry said she could not reveal too many details about the Town’s restructuring plan at this time, as the full plan has not yet been introduced to all of staff and the Town is bound by privacy legislation.
In summary, Corry said, “What I can tell you is two director positions have been merged, so we’re talking positions not people. They’ve been merged and the Director of HR and Corporate Information, which was Lisa Smith, is no longer a director but she will convert to a manager, I can tell you that at this time,” she said, adding, “There is no job loss as a result of this restructuring.”
The Town’s 2017 salary, wages and benefits budget is $10,083,000.
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