Photo: Castanet Staff
Directors have voted in favour of adding a new leadership position to the Thompson-Nicola Regional District’s finance department.
Amanda Ellison, the TNRD’s general manager of people and engagement, presented to the board on Thursday, saying the ask comes as a result of recent discussions around department structure and capacity.
“The Finance Department supports many of the key strategic priorities and initiatives across the TNRD, and much of that has expanded in the last several years,” Ellison said.
“We see the finance department continue to strain with their current capacity, and they have a lot of work to do ahead of them to do strategic work, process improvement work, engagement work with the public, as well as some of the work relating to the forensic audit.”
Ellison said the finance department received funding for one entry level support position in the fall, which alleviated strain for support staff.
“We still feel it’s a priority to be able to enhance our leadership team to help with some of the key strategic policy and process improvement work, which will better enable the team to be able to deal with increasing demands for their work,” Ellison said.
A staff report to the board of directors said the person in this position will support the Chief Financial Officer to meet administration requirements and will work to implement process improvements within the department.
The report said the growth of TNRD services have strained finance team capacity.
Additionally, the report indicates 37 of the 65 recommendations put forward in BDO Canada’s forensic audit will require the work of the finance department.
According to the TNRD, the position will cost $123,000 to $134,000 per year. Money can be taken out of contingency funds in 2022, but staff said in future years the funding will come from increased property taxes.
“Based on the current 2022 tax base, this equates to approximately $1.57 more tax per residential property,” the staff report said.
Kathy Sinclair, TNRD director and Kamloops city councillor, said she didn’t doubt there was a lot of action arising out of the forensic audit. She asked if staff had researched how other regional districts were structured.
Sinclair also asked staff whether the district had considered if forensic audit recommendations might be short term, not long term actions.
“I’m having a hard time with this, just because this is a new creation which will eventually be covered by taxation, and because of recent events I just don’t know the timing is right,” Sinclair said.
Ellison said staff had done research around other regional districts.
She said the position was important to fill.
“Given the look at succession planning, this position becomes critical for the ongoing sustainability of our organization,” Ellison said.
“I think that ties into some of your second questions, Dir. Sinclair, around short-term, long-term. It could be something we continue to evaluate in terms of the structure of the department.”
CAO Scott Hildebrand said succession planning was the most important reason why they were looking at adding another leadership position.
“We only have one manager in the finance department that being Doug [Rae]. I can tell you he is he is overworked and overloaded with some of the workload that is being presented to him and it’s something that we’ve been looking at for a while,” Hildebrand said.
The board of directors voted almost unanimously to approve the new position. Sinclair was opposed.
