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Westlock County hires budget consultant for CAO job

Kay Spiess will prioritize comms, economic development, regional collaboration
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Kay Spiess, Westlock County’s new CAO, says she intends to continue the work of previous top admin Rick McDonald and improve workplace culture.

WESTLOCK — The new CAO at Westlock County says she recognizes there’s been instability in the job she now holds, and intends to work on a new office culture. 

Kay Spiess, a Sturgeon County native, first started with Westlock County last summer as a consultant for a service efficiency review, and stayed through the Budget 2021 process before applying for the top county job. Spiess will head her first council meeting this morning at 9 a.m.

Given her familiarity with the county, Spiess says she’ll continue to work through the changes that her predecessor, Rick McDonald, started to make on the administrative side. 

“I’m going to work together with council to figure out what our priorities are, what are they looking for, what do they think the vision for this municipality is,” Spiess says. 

“I’m very on board with a lot of work that’s already been done previously with (interim CAO) Rick McDonald so I'm going to be continuing a lot of that.” 

She’ll be doing that with less pay than previous CAOs. In a statement provided to the News, Reeve Jared Stitsen said “Following the results of the public engagement survey completed late last year, Council reviewed the Chief Administrative Officer's position and adjusted the compensation and terms which will result in additional savings for the County.” 

Top priorities include economic development and regional collaboration. The county is currently working with the Town of Westlock and the Village of Clyde on writing up a strategy to attract more people and businesses, and retain the ones already here. 

“A lot of that will be coming down to understanding our natural assets. A rural area is different than an urban setting, but it’s all about how we’re going to attract people to our region. People don’t really care about the boundaries. If someone comes to a region, they’re moving to that region, they’re moving to Westlock. It's about creating that consistency among all our municipalities,” Spiess says. 

“The other big thing (at the county) is communication, communication, communication” which includes a revamped website and more social media presence. 

“We’re starting to get better at communicating, and that’s a lot of the goals here, it’s to get better at communicating what does the financial climate look like for the county, what are the services that are appropriate for that,” Spiess says. 

The job she now holds does have a history of instability. Spiess is the tenth CAO in the past seven years — not including planning and community services director Laurie Strutt’s brief tenure before Spiess started. 

That longevity problem has had adverse effects on workplace culture and morale, McDonald said at the time, which was also spelled out in the Budget 2021 document. 

“I actually gave them the advice on that one, I did the review. A lot of what I found was that. A CAO is such a powerful position, it really can change the dynamic of an organization, the way that it’s being run. The constant change in CAOs has been a massive problem here. It's one that’s created a lot of inconsistency,” Spiess says. 

“It’s a challenging position to be in. … I want change the environment here, to create an environment that is energetic, that is fun and we’re allowed to be creative, because that is the way that we will find business improvement.” 

Her 10-year career has been in municipal government, with a start in the finance department at Strathcona County. 

“Being an accountant was not for me, it was not what I wanted to do, but I ended up running projects and taking up project management. So that ended up being my wheelhouse, taking on any little projects that they had. It's actually where I learned about priority-based budgeting.” 

When she consulted the county on Budget 2021, she and McDonald set up the roots of priority-based budgeting here, a process which normally takes about five years to implement but gives better direction to councillors on how money should be spent. 

After five years in Strathcona, Spiess moved south to Rocky View County in a corporate strategy job, and ultimately opened Blossom Consulting, a firm primarily focused on rural and small urban municipalities that generally don’t have the in-house resources. 

“A lot of the stuff I was working on is very modern strategy, modern financing, modern business planning. … I also do some business planning, strategic planning and working with elected officials to get them to get organized and to come up with a solid set of priorities.” 

She says she’s very familiar with the Westlock area, since she grew up near the border between Sturgeon and Westlock. 

“This area has a lot sentimental value to me because I've actually skied on the (Tawatinaw Valley) Ski Hill, I've driven a lot of the backroads, I've been out to Long Island Lake, I've been out to Fawcett. I'm very familiar with the county and the lay of the land.”

Andreea Resmerita, TownandCountryToday.com 

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