The financial leadership positions in C-K are going to be reviewed and realigned in the coming year.
Don Shropshire, the CAO of Chatham-Kent, said with the pending retirement next spring of Gerry Wolting, general manager of corporate services, C-K will be doing a review and making some changes.
“This gives me the opportunity to do some adjustments within our existing structure and to fine tune it,” Shropshire said.
Wolting has also been serving as the acting chief financial officer, Shropshire said.
“There will be a re-alignment in all the financial parts of the organization, they will report directly to the CFO and through to the CAO’s office. That would include the budget and performance management, the finance and taxation pieces, that includes the formal responsibilities of the treasurer under the Municipal Act, which would also include our accounts payable and our accounts receivable,” Shropshire said.
“What I’m looking for is a clear alignment of responsibilities when it comes to our financial portfolio. This is one of our key challenge areas, with financial sustainability. With having the Chief Financial Officer being able to focus on key financial components and report directly to the CAO’s office, I think that aligns more closely with our key investment areas that council has designated for us.”
Shropshire said Wolting has taken on a number of extra responsibilities over the years.
“Gerry’s responsibilities spans a number of different areas,” Shropshire said. “Corporate service include not only the budget and performance management, areas of financial services and treasurer, but also includes information technology, human resources and customer services. Those are parts of the portfolio over the next several months are going to have an opportunity to review those, just to determine if any changes are required for them.”
Shropshire said he is looking to fill the position of CFO in the next two to three months.
“The goal being, with all the other positions there are several logical people that might be able to and be interested in stepping up and taking on some of those responsibilities. With the CFO position, I’ve had some discussions with folks internally and it is not a slam dunk that we’d be able to find that internal candidate. We’d be looking to open that up and have an opportunity to open that up and recruit someone to fill that CFO role.”
“Given that is the case, our finances with the Municipality are pretty complex. I’m hoping to find someone in the next two or three months, so they have an opportunity to have that overlap with Gerry over the course of the next several months, sort of learn the systems and have a transfer of information and knowledge over that time period. We’ve had a vacancy as well, so we can do that with a limited extra cost to the municipality.”
Shropshire added that Wolting is currently in his 29th year working with the municipality.
“You can imagine, not only with the financial side, but there has been a variety of other services as well,” Shropshire said. “I’ve only had the opportunity to work with Gerry in the last four and a half years, in that time period I’ve seen major reorganization in the IT area, basically a revamp of our entire IT systems, Gerry has worked a number of major projects as well, like the Capitol Theatre. He’s had a pretty wide span. We’ll have an opportunity to collect all those contributions and celebrate them as we get a little closer to his retirement.”
Here is the job posting for the CFO position with Chatham-Kent.
