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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2015
No job losses in core review
Few applicants express interest in city’s top job
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BY TAMARA CUNNINGHAM THE NEWS BULLETIN
Program protest
MacKenzie Nordli, left, Brayden Schuler and Kai Gilks, Grade 9 French Immersion students at Nanaimo District Secondary School, protest a possible relocation of the program to John Barsby Secondary Wednesday morning. The district is proposing that the program be moved to Barsby as part of an update to its facilities plan.
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An interim manager position won’t to be filled before top bureaucrat Ted Swabey departs Nov. 13. A “handful” of candidates have expressed interest in filling the interim city manager position and more will be reviewed from a Local Government Management Association list, according to John Van Horne, the city’s director of human resources, who says the city is still in the information and application gathering stage. A search for an interim city manager was launched just days after the municipality announced the departure of Swabey, who has taken the chief administrative officer position at the City of Maple Ridge. Candidates both from within and outside of the City of Nanaimo had until Monday to apply. Van Horne said names will be given to an executive hiring committee to review, but the position will not be filled in time for Swabey’s last day. Swabey told the News Bulletin it is up to council to determine what to do after he’s gone, but the mayor, as CEO, would take on the city manager role by default if no one is in place. An interim position is anticipated to last six months and once filled, the city will search for a permanent city manager.
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VOL. 27, NO. 51
There will be no job losses as a part of the Regional District of Nanaimo’s operational and efficiency review, says its top executive. In 2013, regional district directors approved a motion to conduct an extensive core services review, which was done through feedback from management and staff. The board voted to accept the report at its Oct. 27 meeting. “There’s no loss of positions,” said Paul Thorkelsson, regional district chief administrative officer. “Some of the recommendations speak to potential shifting to different priorities, but no loss of positions.” The report’s priority recommendations constitute more than $1 million in direct savings for the regional district, with another $250,000 in “potential avoided costs.” Thorkelsson said a number of recommen-
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dations representing large savings were already implemented, such as the transition to compressed natural gas for the transit fleet – a $300,000 savings. He said there are a wide range of recommendations in the report, which the regional district board will refer to its strategic planning work in the coming months. “The idea being that it’s part of that strategic planning. They’ll work through which recommendations perhaps they want to implement, or maybe prioritize for themselves, which ones they want to go forward with,” said Thorkelsson. In terms of priorities that need addressing, he said fire services was one. “It’s clear that we’re not able to provide the level of support that those various fire departments and their societies are asking for. We just don’t have the resources, so that’s an issue for the board to deal with in their strategic planning, about needing to dedicate more resources to that,” Thorkelsson said. reporter@nanaimobulletin.com
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