The city is looking to hire a new chief financial officer and manager of financial services with two more of its staff heading to work for the City of Edmonton.
Less than a month after having the word “acting” removed from his title, CFO Gene Peskens has accepted a job with Edmonton in the financial services department. His last day was Friday.
Peskens, the former director of financial services, was appointed acting CFO when Dean Screpnek left in September. Peskens had worked for St. Albert for two years after serving as CFO in Leduc.
“There are better opportunities,” Peskens said. “You know, Edmonton is a bigger organization, there are bigger opportunities there.”
Coupled with Peskens’ move is the departure of Mike Dowler, also moving on to the City of Edmonton. St. Albert’s former manager of financial services had originally been approached to serve as acting CFO after Peskens gave his notice.
Ed Kaemingh, St. Albert’s manager of accounting services, will fill in as CFO until a suitable candidate has been found.
Acting city manager Chris Jardine said he approached Dowler to serve as acting CFO the day before he announced he was leaving St. Albert.
“He was nice enough not to laugh at me while I was talking to him,” Jardine said. “We’re disappointed to lose both of them.”
Both Peskens and Dowler maintained they were leaving strictly for better opportunities and not because of problems working for St. Albert.
“It’s a good organization. I think there are a lot of great people working for the organization,” Dowler said. He has worked twice for the city, once for six years and most recently for four.
“I think it’s just a case where the organization isn’t big enough to accommodate the career aspirations of all those who work for it,” he said.
Peskens said there might be some disappointment in his departure, but it was typical of the business.
“When there is change in organizations, you have people that are excited and people that have more difficulties with the change. I think that’s normal,” Peskens said. “I’m not leaving because I’m not happy here. I’m leaving because there is a better opportunity.”
Jardine said he isn’t concerned about a morale issue beyond the city’s “working family” losing two people, but admitted St. Albert does face a challenge with retention when it comes to opportunities and salary, especially with Edmonton being so close and hiring so many staff.
“We can’t compete dollar-for-dollar salary-wise, so we have to be more about the tangibles we can compete with, like workplace culture and job flexibility,” Jardine said.
Mayor Nolan Crouse also denied any systemic problems within the city.
“I’m not concerned. I hate to see them go but we’ve got an organization that’s deep. We’ll have good people replace them,” he said.
Peskens’ departure brings to three the number of senior managers the city needs to hire. The city has been without a permanent city manager since Bill Holtby was fired. The city is also having problems hiring for the newly-created general manager of economic development position due to a lack of candidates that meet its qualifications.
“If there’s 300 municipalities in Alberta, there’s 300 people looking to do something on economic development, as well as companies looking, so we knew it would be a tight market,” Jardine said.
