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CAO deadlock remains

Council remains in a deadlock on hiring a new chief administrative officer, with no apparent movement to find a replacement for interim CAO Doug Topinka in weeks. Coun.

Council remains in a deadlock on hiring a new chief administrative officer, with no apparent movement to find a replacement for interim CAO Doug Topinka in weeks.

Coun. Shelly Gurba, who removed her name as the hiring committee chair in January, said the hunt for a new CAO has “basically come to an extreme halt”.

“I expected that when Mayor (Roger) Morrill was going to take over as chair that he would actively pursue having a new CAO, but I haven't seen that go into effect yet, and he has not told us what he is doing with it,” she said. “We're sort of standing in limbo at

this point, which I'm not happy with.”

She said she hoped as mayor that Morrill would see hiring a CAO new as a number one priority for the town, as it's expensive to keep an interim CAO in place and imperative to get someone permanent in the position.

Gurba said interim CAO Topinka is making $16,000 a month, which on a yearly basis would come out to nearly double what the town's last permanent CAO was making.

Morrill said he considers the issue at a stall until the majority of council issues some direction to him as chair of the committee.

“As soon as the majority of council suggests we should do something, or direction, I'd be happy to call a meeting and discuss whatever they wish to do. But as of right now we're at a deadlock,” he said. “I've simply allowed council to get back to me as necessary.”

Topinka has given no set deadline for his departure, but said he will remain in his position at least to get council through finalizing the 2017 budget, and the pool project RFP's.

“Then we'll see what it looks like.” Topinka said.

Coun. Verhaeghe said he's unconcerned about searching for a new CAO at this point in time.

“We have an interim CAO at present time and as far as I'm concerned there's no need to be actively be searching for a CAO, because we do have an interim CAO,” he said. “I don't think there's any sense of urgency at this time.”

In November, after the town hired a $14,000 hiring consultant to help the process, an individual the town offered the job to down the offer turned.

Verhaeghe said he thinks after previous councillor Nicole Adams resigned on Dec. 30 the deadlock council currently sits in began.

“Perhaps there was some thought out there, that, ‘There's four of us, we can do what we want',” he said. “It seems to me we got into that deadlock right after (Adams) resignation.”

The stalemate did begin on Jan. 10, when three Coun. Schafer, Verhaeghe and Morrill wanted to introduce a candidate from a previous hiring round, and the other three councillors rejected the proposal.

Coun. Tanu Evans said the hiring committee is currently “non-existant”, and since Morrill took over as chair there's been no communication on the matter.

“I have heard nothing, (and) no attempt has been made by him to set a direction or attempt to find a solution to our CAO hunt,” he said. “As a new chair it's his responsibility to set direction and try to find a path forward.

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