City hires former CAO as new CAO

By Collin Gallant on August 21, 2018.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com @CollinGallant

Medicine Hat will again rehire a former chief administrative officer to satisfy its peculiar three-fold needs as a municipality, power company and petroleum exploration business.

Robert Nicolay was announced at Monday night’s council meeting as the replacement for retiring top administrator Merete Heggelund when she departs this fall.

Nicolay held the position from 1995 to 1999, at which point he left to join City of Calgary power entity Enmax, and was most recently the city manager of Grande Prairie.

“We always talk about finding someone with municipal, power and oil and gas (experience), and in this country it basically doesn’t exist,” said Mayor Ted Clugston after Monday’s meeting.

“Bob obviously has a lot of perks.”

Clugston said the city’s priorities are set by council and won’t change. They are namely boosting power profits, rejuvenating petroleum exploration and containing the budget to reverse a revenue shortfall.

A shortlist of three candidates was interviewed by a hiring committee that including Clugston, and councillors Robert Dumanowski and Julie Friesen.

Friesen worked with Nicolay in the late 1990s and noted he has also worked in the junior oilpatch sector, in renewable energy and with Canada Olympic Development Agency.

“He’s got a lot of well-rounded and relevant experience and professional background that’s very well suited to the position (in Medicine Hat), which is quite diverse in its needs,” said Friesen.

“His professional travels have taken him a lot of places, but I think he’s always considered Medicine Hat as his home.”

It’s the second time in extended history that Medicine Hat has rehired a former CAO for the position.

Ray Barnard was the city’s first CAO starting in 1989 when Municipal Government Act created the position to replace the chief commissioner designation.

He was rehired in 2009 to guide municipal operations when the energy division became its own portfolio to be headed by then-CAO Gerry Labas.

Barnard retired in 2013.

Heggelund, who had previously worked for Norwegian state petroleum company Total, was promoted from the city’s corporate commission at that time. She announced this spring that after five years in the top position she would retire.

Nicolay returned to Medicine Hat in 2017 as a partner in Blue Solar Wind Energy, which has a memorandum with the city to test its systems locally in partnership with the utility company and Medicine Hat College. Clugston wasn’t immediately sure of how that arrangement might be affected.

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