The city is looking for another senior manager after Bob Treidler announced his resignation.
Treidler, 43, began his seven-year city tenure as director of corporate strategy and business management. He then became general manager of business and strategic services when that division was created four years ago. He’s moving on to become a vice-president with Canadian Western Bank.
“It was a tough decision. I am sad to go,” he said.
Treidler did a lot of interacting with members of the business community and felt his proudest achievement was fostering more open communication between the city and the private sector.
“I’m going to miss working with all the different folks that I work with both inside and outside the organization but I’m excited about the future,” he said.
His last day with the city will be Feb. 18.
City manager Bill Holtby credited Treidler with creating sophisticated business planning processes.
“He leaves some big shoes to fill,” Holtby said.
Mass exodus
Treidler is the third senior manager to leave in recent months. The city lost its communications director in late January and had a new general manager of planning and engineering start last week, although that person had been in the role before.
Late last year the city also accepted the resignation of its senior lawyer, a position recently filled internally.
All those who left had other opportunities come up that they felt they couldn’t pass up. Treidler’s situation was the same.
“My leaving is related only to the fact that I’ve got a career opportunity to move on,” he said.
The departures are a reflection of the size of the city organization, Holtby said.
“It’s an unfortunate part of doing business that people have their careers and want to progress in their careers and we’re just not a big enough organization for that to happen where they’d stay with us for 30 or 40 years,” he said.
There can be positives to staff turnover: new people can bring in fresh ideas and new perspectives that lead to efficiencies, Holtby said.
The city tries to hire people with the skills and experience to step right into the job at near-100 per cent capacity but it generally takes six months to a year for a new person to learn the background of issues and the local nuances, Holtby said.
“We’ve been caught in a bit of a difficult point where we’ve lost several people in a short period of time that are all moving on to bigger and better things,” he said. “That’s a challenge for us. One of the key things is you lose the corporate history on [issues.]”
He admitted that Treidler’s departure is less than ideal.
“It’s probably just too many in a short period of time,” he said.
