Staff Restructuring

A natural progression for a small town to a fast growing City, is the need for advanced experience within its Council and staff.

In a high growth model, change occurs quickly and it is important to embrace it rather than fight against it or think one can avoid it. Our City was in a bad spot. Our debt was spiraling out of control and our operations costs were out of control.  Plus, people were taking advantage of the chaos. Really a perfect storm.

As you have seen for the past four years, according to Municipal Affairs from 2017 to 2020 the council and administration ran a deficit each year and sadly, used grant money for operations expenses, rather than capital expenses as they are meant for. Such as roads, parks, equipment and recreation. 

The staff and Council was unable and lacked the experience to see the problem or understand what to do about it. Adding insult to injury, the Council continued to mislead residents and claim to residents they were reducing taxes three years in a row. In the last year, 2020, the Council and Administration lost and spent a deficit of over $7,000,000 in operations costs and they chose to hide this from residents and falsely claim to reduce taxes by 2% to pretend all is well. We do not need this type of Government. Where was the transparency? Municipal Affairs knew this, why would they allow this to continue? 

Imagine if that Council was successful in taking another $40,000,000 of debt for the Indoor soccer field, that we proved would only cost between $7.5m to $15m. Costing residents an extra $25M dollars in wrongful spending. Yes, it was all debt, as they were taking funds from our MSI funds meant for our roads and infrastructure badly needed work, and now debt would be needed for those projects. Literally, a train wreck was nearly missed, when our Council was successful in stopping such a travesty and wrongful spending.

How did this get through Council and Administration. We badly needed some changes. Increased expertise and significant improvement in transparency and controls. We needed staff that would know accurate pricing, look for best pricing and have enough expertise to know what was true. 

We quickly were shown staff that wanted to stop progress, stop change. Staff that did not want the challenge of growing and improving and that had other agendas. At the end of the day our Council and staff are here only for the residents. The residents are the owners of the City. They decide through voting how the City should grow and change. Regardless of what speed you believe we should grow at, we need the expertise to grow efficiently and effectively perform at a high level of excellence. 

Chestermere does need to change, though it does not need to add massive density, it does not need to grow just to grow. Smart growth is attractive. Residents want the Council and staff to work hard to get a good return on their investment. Ensure their is sustainability in decision and actions. Not to be wasteful. Spend funds where it matters to our residents. 

STAFF - Staff are our front line, they are the workers making the dream of Chestermere happen. We want continually improving staff members. Always, adding more expertise and experience. 

Our Council modified the CAO model into a Tri-CAO model overseeing three divisions. Vastly different divisions, with very different skill sets required. 

1. Corporate Services (Internal operations & Finance)

2. Development & Infrastructure 

3. Community Operations (Roads & Fleet)

Allowing more skilled people to run a division in a more focused manner. Allowing each CAO to have more time to focus on their departments within their division and those staff in each of their departments had more time with their CAO.  We found this to be a significant improvement for staff and for the CAO to have Council hear their ideas and challenges they each were having. Rather than the old model, which had one person decide what was the most important issue to them to bring to Council and not necessarily what was actually happening.  It gave us a better hand on the pulse of the City and we found it had the effect of greater transparency, enabling us to react quicker and less chance of allowing wrongdoing to go unnoticed. 

Restructuring Chestermere, is based on 4 key pillars to build a strong foundation upon.

1. Elevated Financial Sophistication. New Revenue Streams, Strong Commercial tax base, Developers paying their way 

2. 3 E's. Efficiently spending of tax dollars, Effectiveness of reaching goals, Expertise within the City.

3. High Quality of Life. Listening to residents needs. Planning for a high quality of life for residents and Safety & Crime prevention.

4. Educated Long term planning