Big change at the top in CBS Town Hall
By Craig Westcott
CBS council has changed the top of its management pyramid, combining the role of Town Clerk with Chief Administrative Officer, eliminating one person and the salary.
Mayor Darrin Bent said he couldn’t comment on the details of the departure of long-time Town Clerk Gail Pomroy, as that is a personal human resources matter.
Pomroy had served in the position for many years helping administer Town operations as CBS grew to become the second largest municipality in the province. She had enough years in the job to qualify for retirement but could not be reached for comment prior to press deadline.
The role of Town Clerk is now being filled by CAO Brian Crawley, who also holds the designation of Town Manager.
Mayor Bent said Crawley is not receiving any extra pay for adding the Town Clerk’s position to his duties.
“Not a nickel,” said the mayor. “He’s not getting anything extra for this.”
The move was confirmed by council at its August 11 public meeting.
“We’re always looking for ways to do things leaner and more efficiently,” Bent said after the meeting. “We’ve done some restructuring in our administration branch. We’ve made some savings there.”
Bent said under the Towns and Local District Services Act, the Town must have a Town Clerk.
“We looked at the work we were doing, we found we could find some efficiencies, and that’s what we’ve done,” Bent said.
No other positions are affected.
Crawley himself won’t be recording the minutes of council meetings, which is one of the principal duties of a Town Clerk, as there are two executive secretaries in the department who had been doing that all along with Pomroy.
“There are some savings in this and we have to determine what happens with those and how that money will be reallocated, but as of right now, we’re going to stand pat for a while and see where we are,” Bent said, adding the nature of Crawley’s CAO role, and that of other senior staff, is that they do all kinds of duties. “We try to stay as efficient as we can here because we know how difficult it is; everything goes up in price. We have a contract with our unionized staff and they’ll be getting an increase (this year) and that costs money, everything costs money, and we have to try to find ways to make sure that we’re doing things the most efficient way. Finances are always top of mind, it’s the first thing that comes up, money, always. We think we can do this in a more efficient way going forward for the Town and that’s what we’re going to do.”
Bent said the standalone position of Town Clerk came with a significant salary, well over $100,000 per year.
“It’s going to make a difference with expenditures, it’s a big savings in the long term for the Town,” he said.