By Jennifer SmithStaff reporter Dec 29 2006 http://www.kelownacapnews.com/
New management typically brings some change, but for the City of Kelowna it appears a unique overhaul of the bureaucracy’s inner workings is on order. Last week, the city issued a statement saying Ron Mattiussi, who assumed the city manager’s post last summer, has assigned human resources point-man Rick Baker to review each department and make the adjustments necessary to see the city into a new era.
With the new job description comes a new temporary title for Baker, who will assume responsibility for ensuring city staff keep pace with the municipality’s growth demands and minimize the impact of current labour shortages as director of corporate development. “It will be a very in-depth, detailed assessment of everything that we’re doing, just making sure that we’re positioned well to meet the challenges that we’re going to have over the next ten years,” said Baker.
Chief among those challenges is a qualified labour shortage facing business and bureaucracy that hits just as in-migration from places like the Lower Mainland and Alberta increases demand for city services. “There hasn’t been the same growth in staffing numbers that there has been in the population,” said Baker. He added that the real problem at this point is in finding professional and technical workers. At present, 11 key financial and technical positions—things like engineers, planners and senior financial staff—sit empty, leaving current city staff to pick up the shortfall.
“We are trying to deal with issues in a very strategic way, but we find often that we are in competition with the private sector, which has the ability to throw more resources at this than we do at the city,” Baker said. For example, he is currently looking for people with strong backgrounds in transportation and a key planning position, but has not found many qualified applicants. There are roughly 750 city staff and Baker doubts the list vacant job postings dipped much below 30 open positions at any given time this year. “The job market is competitive everywhere right now, we’re not alone in this,” Baker said. “We’ve had to be a little bit innovative in our searches and do what we can to find people that are right for the jobs.”
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Don Quixote NOTE: This is a posting from Dec 29. Obviously Kelowna was recruiting Vernon's Finance manager and Human Resource manager from this point on if not earlier !
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