WESTLOCK – With Westlock County councillors now in the market for the municipality’s 11th CAO in the past eight years and fourth this year alone, reeve Christine Wiese says they’ll take their time to find the right replacement as they want the continual turnover to stop.
Following the March 7 resignation of CAO Kay Spiess, who started at the county last April, Wiese said they’re looking for someone who “has experience and a passion” for municipal government and wants to be in the community for years, not months.
After Spiess went on an “unexpected” six-week leave Feb. 4, the county hired Rosemary Offrey to head council’s Feb. 8 meeting, before bringing in Pat Vincent, who’ll act as interim CAO until a permanent replacement is hired.
“It’s a process that we can’t rush and we have to do our background work. We have to do more extensive vetting, because this has to stop,” said Wiese, following the March 8 meeting council where Spiess’ resignation was announced. “We want to bring someone into the community for several years, not for several months.”
Wiese said they haven’t decided whether they’ll engage a headhunting firm, simply run ads across a variety of media or a combination of both — more details on the hiring process are expected to be discussed by councillors at their March 17 governance and priorities meeting. Wiese, who also talked about having senior admin involved in the process, would like to see the successful candidate physically move to the community as neither of the last two permanent CAOs have lived here.
“We want the new CAO to build a relationship with council, but also a long-term relationship with the staff and with Westlock County … we want someone who’s invested in the community. To me that would be very important,” she continued. “But it just can’t be about that either. We need someone who has experience and a passion for the job.”
CAO merry-go-round
In addition to a bevy of interim CAOs like Rick McDonald, Vincent and assorted county senior admin — some of which who’ve served multiple times — Westlock County has gone through seven permanent CAOs since the turn of the century including Wyatt Glebe, Jim Squire, Edward LeBlanc, Peter Kelly, Duane Coleman, Leo Ludwig and Spiess.
The turnover has been more pronounced in the last eight years following the departure of LeBlanc, a 29-year county employee, in early 2014.
Kelly, who had no previous CAO experience at the time but had been mayor of Halifax, Nova Scotia, was hired in September 2014 and left under a cloud of failed land dealings and other irregularities in early 2016 — his tenure was well-documented in the 2017 municipal inspection report.
Coleman, who had previously led Lac La Biche County, was next up, but only stayed for three months before taking the CAO job in Leduc.
Ludwig, who had been terminated without cause from his previous job as Vulcan County CAO, was hired in September 2016 and stayed until 2020 — his final five months at the municipality were spent on paid leave before his resignation was officially announced in September.
Spiess, a Sturgeon County native, first started with Westlock County in the summer of 2020 as a consultant for a service efficiency review and stayed throughout the Budget 2021 process before becoming the CAO on April 1, 2021.
The previous council conducted a six-month review of her contract Oct. 12, 2021, six days before the municipal election, while a formal review by the current council had been slated for March.
McDonald said previously that the constant turnover had negatively impacted workplace culture and morale at the county, while Spiess said in her initial interview with the Westlock News last April that, “The constant change in CAOs has been a massive problem here. It's one that’s created a lot of inconsistency.”
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