City reorganizes departments with cuts in mind

By COLLIN GALLANT on April 28, 2021.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

A remaking of the corporate flow chart at city hall is described by top administrators as a platform to seek out major spending cuts, including more than $5 million on salaries, and bolster revenue in 2021, top administrators say.

First approved late last year, the official paper work to rename positions and assign new responsibilities throughout the corporate structure was completed last week when council approved a new bylaw.

Over the past four months, that’s led to no shortage of meeting quips about who’s job title is what, but also no clear view from the outside about the changes.

That will become clear moving forward as changes take place, positions are eliminated and duties spelled out.

“The new alignment allows us to reduce our executive level (compensation) by about $300,000, and we’ve regrouped the functions in five branches instead of six – it’s a more logical alignment of business units,” said Bob Nicolay, whose own job title changes from chief administrative officer to city manager.

Division heads, previously known as commissioners, are now known as “managing directors,” and their general managers become “directors” in a move Nicolay says is cultural and denotes an administrator’s need to set and implement “strategic direction” rather than simply “manage.”

The reorganization, the largest of three such moves in six years, also moves whole departments or portions of portfolios to different areas in an effort to reduce duplication.

It also creates a new division, titled strategic management and analysis, and formalizes Invest Medicine Hat division, created in late 2019.

Coun. Phil Turnbull was the only council member to speak to the changes when they were passed this month, providing a ringing endorsement.

Mayor Ted Clugston says the new division will modernize business planning at the city, and drive the “Financially Fit” acceleration.

“It’s really designed to implement the cost saving and drive that,” he said. “They’re the ones coming up with the ideas … bringing business cases forward for new projects.

“We were pretty good at that on the utilities side, but one other things, maybe not so much.”

Last year council approved a high level plan to find nearly $15 million in cost savings this year alone so budget authors can keep taxation at 2019 levels (making permanent a 2020 tax cancellation and ensuring zero increase this summer).

For that to occur, said Nicolay, it will require substantial changes to operations as well as financial cost management, such as with insurance costs, to cut total costs.

“We needed to find a framework that’s flexible,” he said. “(Of the $15-million target) about 30 per cent of that is manpower, and a big part of the reorganization is to ensure downsizing will come without an impact of services provided to the public.”

Leading up to this week, the city had four divisions and four standing committees of council that oversaw them: energy and utilities, corporate services, public services and development and infrastructure.

The new structure eliminates D&I, making a new “utilities and infrastructure” division responsible for sewer, water and road construction, among other duties and specific day-to-day operations in Municipal Works and Environment Utility departments.

Strategic Management continues the work done previously by the Utilities Business Support Unit office for the gas production, power plant and distribution company.

That entity under then-general manager Rochelle Pancoast sought out ways to reduce costs and boost income in the business unit.

Now managing director Pancoast has a mandate to help examine programs and business operations throughout all city departments, providing background or analysis of initiatives, cost reductions, or program expenditures.

That work has been done solely by corporate services in the past, which still maintains an oversight role, but on a quarterly basis, and not to the depth with which Pancoast’s division has been charged, she said.

“We’re bringing together that analysis that was in utilities to the municipal side as well,” she said.

The office also includes a new intergovernmental relations portfolio and “integrated project planning and execution” office, along with the planning department.

That office handles regulatory process for development and is being maintained outside the Invest Medicine Hat umbrella created in late 2019.

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