Public services division head Brian Mastel will leave his job with the city in January.--SUBMITTED PHOTO
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
Further changes are coming to top levels of city hall in early 2023.
Brian Mastel, the head of the city’s public services division, will leave the organization in January, the city announced Wednesday morning, with Mastel telling the News he has accepted another job.
“An opportunity has come up that’s exciting, that intrigued me, and that will keep my in Medicine Hat,” he told the News. “I’ve got to do a lot really neat stuff with the city, but I sort of plan five years ahead, and (the new job) gives me a chance to grow in the next several years.”
At this point, Mastel isn’t releasing more details, but said he plans to remain with city hall until late January to assist the transition to an interim replacement. A process to hire a permanent managing director for the division would follow.
A new city manager is also expected to be in place in the new year after councillors told the News last week the hiring process for that position is coming to a close.
Mastel, 44, joined city hall in 2012 as finance general manager from the private sector as a senior accounting manager with a construction supply company in Ontario. The Redcliff native, who holds a finance degree at the University of Calgary, became the city’s corporate services commissioner two years later.
He was main author of the “Financially Fit for the Future” budget process that sought to replace volatile dividends from gas and power sales in the municipal budget.
Mastel also led the division during the initial work to update investment strategy after the province gave the city wider options to invest its outsized monetary reserves.
In 2019, he became head of the public services division, the largest in terms of employees and spending in the city, when the division worked to reopen and then later find a contract operator for the Veiner Centre.
“He has been a steady force within the city organization through what have been some very transformative years,” said interim city manager Glenn Feltham in a statement.
Council members have said they are in the final process of hiring a full-time city manager, and the tentative time table for a new person to be in place is early 2023.
The new manager would replace Feltham, who was hired after permanent CAO Bob Nicolay retired in early 2022 and Merete Heggelund, the former city CAO, took over the responsibilities for a three-month term.
The city is also without a managing director of the Invest Medicine Hat office, but administrators stated during budget discussions this month that the future of the division tasked with economic development will be determined in a council and staff review in 2023.
