The Town of Athabasca will resume its search for a permanent chief administrative officer (CAO) after three months of relative silence on the issue in council.
Mayor Roger Morrill, head of the CAO hiring committee, suggested council re-advertise for the position during the April 18 town council meeting.
“Our hiring consultant recommended, after the failed attempt at the end of last year, to wait at least several months before re-advertising for the CAO position,” he said. “Our experienced CAO has now helped us navigate the waters of budget 2017 and the major accomplishment. I thought that was very important we get that completed before chance of interruption.”
Since Jan. 10, when council deadlocked on how to proceed forward and after which Coun. Shelly Gurba resigned as hiring committee chair, council has made no moves on the issue.
After Morrill’s presentation, Coun. Tanu Evans said he was “perplexed” to even see the topic on the council agenda. He recounted that in the previous round of interviews, three members of the hiring committee – which consists of all council members – interviewed candidates and a second round of interviews was made available for the other three councillors that missed the first interviews.
“Three members around this table flat-out refused to even meet with them,” he said. “I see no point to advertise for this, wasting everyone’s time and money.”
Coun. Tim Verhaeghe responded that he took exception to Evans’ comments, about councillors refusing to meet candidates, and he was more than willing to meet for interviews but the dates that had been put forward did not align with his schedule.
Evans responded to Verhaeghe about the last hiring process that no permanent dates were ever set, and the three council members “would not even extend dates” of availability for the secondary interviews.
Verhaeghe said that is Evans’ version of events and his opinion, which he is entitled to.
“Let’s not rehash the past and try to move forward here,” he said.
After discussions about when to hammer out details of the recruitment package, Evans said council has disagreed on the CAO’s salary before, and council “can’t agree on basically anything to do with this subject”.
“This is the definition of insanity, as Einstein put it. We are doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting different results,” he said.
Gurba said council really needs to move forward with the hiring, and made a motion to seek a permanent CAO using the hiring committee.
Evans suggested an alternate idea, of utilizing contract services or “use anything” to get through to the end of the council term.
“We are at the end of our term, we are the outgoing government. I believe a new town council with a fresh view, a fresh perspective and without all this baggage should be the ones negotiating for a new CAO,” he said.
Gurba said it would not be fair to the next council to be saddled with the responsibility of hiring a new CAO right out of the gate.
“I think that we should be fixing our mess up and continuing on,” she said.
Morrill called the vote and the motion passed with only Evans opposed.
