SF organizational review calls for major office staff increases

Jeff Green | Apr 14, 2016

Seven new jobs envisioned, mostly at upper management level

An organizational review by Toronto/Ottawa-based consultants, StrategyCorp, noted that South Frontenac spends less than most other comparable municipalities in a number of areas, including: administration, parks/recreation and facilities, fire and police, and planning/development.

However, if the final report they submitted to Council this week is adopted, that might all change.

Among the major recommendations in their report is the creation of an entire new administrative tier, with three new directors to be slotted in between the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) and the departmental managers that are currently in place.

The positions of director of corporate services, director of development services, and director of infrastructure services are only three of seven new positions envisioned by the report. The other four are that of township clerk, a fire education officer, a communications officer and an economic development officer.

Because of the “lean management” structure that is currently in place in the township, there is no time available to management staff to look towards the future needs of the township, according to the report.

“Through interviews, all senior management staff noted that close to 100% of their time is devoted to day-to-day operations. This has resulted in an inability to address strategic planning concerns, as management of the urgent can often crowd out management of the important,” the report says.

One of the key insights of the report was that the current Chief Administrative Officer/Clerk, Wayne Orr, spends almost 100% of his time dealing with day-to-day matters.

“A municipalities' CAO should be its chief strategist. With the current weight of CAO and clerk responsibilities, combined with an unwieldy span of control, the CAO simply does not have the capacity to be South Frontenac's chief strategist at present,” said the report.

In order to address this, the report not only recommends creating a stand-alone clerk position to relieve the CAO of half of their responsibilities, it also says that the number of times council meets should change radically. Council currently meets almost every week, on the first and third Tuesdays of the month for a council meeting, and on the second and fourth Tuesdays as a committee of the whole.

Noting that “the frequency of Council and Committee of the Whole meetings is taxing on senior management staff” the report recommends eliminating the committee of the whole meetings entirely and limiting council meetings to one or two per month.

It says that this would allow senior management to work with council “in crafting more strategic agendas and to provide staff with more time to consider, reflect and prepare more robust reports”.

In place of the current structure, council committees would become more of a focal point for decision-making.

The report calls for four new positions to be created within a year or two, and three to follow later on.

One of those is a new clerk, to alleviate pressure on the CAO; two are at the new director level; and one is a fire prevention officer.

The report calls for an immediate re-design of the corporate services department this year, with the creation of a director of corporate services to oversee the work of the treasurer, a newly hired clerk, and the human resources officer.

South Frontenac Council meetings have been dominated, in recent months, with planning matters. At their meeting on April 7, for example, Council heard from over a dozen members of the public on a new subdivision proposal in the Storrington district, in a meeting that eventually ran over three hours.

To deal with planning, the StrategyCorp report calls for the immediate hiring of a director of development services to oversee the work of the planner, chief building official, and recreation supervisor.

“The Planning department is currently not working towards driving a comprehensive, streamlined development process. The department is very transactionally focused and the development flow chart that is currently being developed to guide the development process has been largely led by the CAO,” the report says.

It also identifies that the planning process is bogged down by a lack of clarity in the relationship between the township's planning department and that of Frontenac County.

“Reconciling the role of the Township vis-à-vis the County and setting clear roles for each level of government in the process” would be an immediate task to be undertaken by the new director of development services.

The position of fire prevention officer is proposed partly to improve the level of service, and partly to free up the fire chief to deal with administrative requirements.

While the report says Council needs to consider pay equity issues and recruitment issues if they implement the hiring that it calls for, it does not talk about the budgetary implications of its recommendations.