WESTLOCK - The firm tasked with finding Westlock County’s 16th CAO in the last 22 years won’t be charging a fee since the last one they helped recruit resigned less than a year into her tenure.
At their March 17 governance and priorities meeting, councillors and senior administration went behind closed doors with Leaders International Edmonton office partner Ardyce Kouri to discuss not only the March 7 resignation of Kay Spiess after only 11 months on the job, but the process of finding her replacement.
In a March 18 interview, interim CAO Pat Vincent said that due to Spiess leaving the municipality within 18 months, Leaders International will not be charging its standard recruitment fee, a bill that would have been upwards of $30,000. Spiess was the county’s ninth CAO since 2014, but with Vincent and Rosemary Offrey, who headed council’s Feb. 8 meeting only, the next CAO hired will now be the municipality’s 12th in the last eight years and 16th since the turn of the century.
“They have an 18-month guarantee, so if there’s good news in this dark cloud that’s hung over the county for the last little while, they will be doing the recruitment at no cost,” said Vincent. “Normally it can run $30,000 to $40,000. The standard fee by any of the firms who are well known and used by municipalities in the province is 25 per cent of whatever the salary is for the CAO coming in. So in this particular case the cost will be the time council has to invest in reviewing a new list of candidates. And there may even be some candidates from the last round who are still interested and council may want to interview them again.”
Vincent, who’s been interim CAO since Feb. 9 and served in the same role for the county in the summer of 2016, expects interviews to begin within three weeks and said “word is out in the industry” as he’s gotten a handful of calls from prospective candidates. Vincent has 46 years of municipal government experience and is being paid $159 per hour, plus expenses like mileage, meals and hotel accommodations while staying in town during the work week. Following the acceptance of Spiess’ resignation March 8, councillors unanimously agreed to extend his contract until April 30, noting the possibility it may last longer.
“Normally it takes 90 to 120 days by the time a CAO resigns, then to go through the recruitment process and then hire someone, who may or may not have to give notice at their end,” said Vincent. “I think Westlock County is going to be fortunate this time and it may happen a little bit quicker.”
In a separate interview, reeve Christine Wiese said they’re pleased the process is moving forward, but reiterated that they will not rush it and are committed to finding the right candidate having said previously they want to hire someone who’ll stay for “several years, not for several months.”
“It was nice that she (Kouri) thoroughly heard what council is looking for so they can provide candidates that fall within our criteria,” said Wiese. “She said there is a market there and people are looking, but I don’t want to rush it. I don’t want us to miss out on potential candidates, but I also don’t want us to rush the process either. We need to find a good fit for council, for senior administration and the county as a whole.”
How did we get here?
Spiess went on an “unexpected” six-week leave following a four-hour-and-14-minute, councillors-only meeting Feb. 3 — a gathering that she and community services coordinator Adrienne Finnegan attended but exited after only three minutes. At the conclusion of that meeting a motion made by Coun. Jared Stitsen and passed by council directed Wiese to get a legal opinion on in-camera item 9.1.
At their Feb. 22 meeting, councillors went in-camera briefly to discuss a personnel matter and when they emerged voted 7-0 to direct Wiese and deputy reeve Ray Marquette to proceed pursuant to the legal advice they had received. Spiess, who had been slated to return to work March 18, officially tendered her resignation March 7 and a non-disclosure agreement has been signed between the two parties — the Westlock News reached out to Spiess on a pair of occasions but received no reply.
In a past interview, Wiese confirmed that Spiess did not receive a payout beyond what any employee who resigned would normally get under provincial labour laws.
“There’s no severance. There are terms of acceptance of the resignation from her contract. That’s standard as per any employer … I can’t say exactly what the terms of her contract are,” Wiese said.
Turnover at the top
In addition to at least eight interim CAOs like Rick McDonald, Vincent and assorted county senior admin, many who’ve served in the role multiple times, Westlock County’s seven permanent CAOs since the turn of the century are: Wyatt Glebe, Jim Squire, Edward LeBlanc, Peter Kelly, Duane Coleman, Leo Ludwig and Spiess.
The turnover has been especially pronounced in the last decade following the spring 2014 departure of LeBlanc, a 29-year county employee.
Kelly was hired in September 2014 and had no previous CAO experience at the time, but had been mayor of Halifax, Nova Scotia. He left in early 2016 under a cloud of failed land dealings and other irregularities — 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 was hired in September 2016 and stayed until 2020 with his final five months at the municipality spent on paid leave as his resignation was officially announced in September.
Spiess, a Sturgeon County native, came to Westlock County initially in the summer of 2020 as a consultant and stayed throughout the Budget 2021 process before being hired as 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 municipality, while Spiess said in her initial interview with the 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.”
