The top administrator job in Alberta municipalities is increasingly a revolving door position, research shows.
A report commissioned by Alberta Municipalities and executed through University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy found the tenure of chief administrative officers (CAOs) in Alberta has been declining for twenty years. Once commonly a long-held role, CAOs now have an average tenure well under the length of a single council term.
CAOs are appointed by council and oversee all municipal services and staff. Their success and longevity are indicators of the health of municipal public services and local government, and the growing instability of CAOs is “currently ringing alarm bells,” the report said.
“There is a very real cost in municipalities when there is a lot of turnover in the top administrative role,” said Dr. Kate Graham, researcher and co-author of the report.
“In many cases, there's a financial cost, paying a severance or the cost of recruiting head-hunters. There is also a time and attention cost that goes into the recruitment process itself. And then I actually think that the most significant impact can be it really takes attention away from other priorities in the community,” Graham said.
There are many factors behind the decline in CAO tenures. Some retire, some are fired by council, and others move to a different county, “but those have always been factors in CAO departure,” Graham said.
“The fact that the tenure is getting shorter, I think speaks to either changes in the role or changes in the environment for the role.”
At least six people have held the CAO position in Lac La Biche County since 2011, and over $1 million in severance has been paid to outgoing administrators during that time. Like many municipalities, Lac La Biche County is at a crossroads, said councillor Jason Stedman, and it is challenging to find leadership that fits with their vision for the community.
“I think a lot of communities are trying to redefine themselves and take the community into a new direction. Finding the right people that are going be able to fulfill that want and desire is becoming tougher and tougher,” Stedman said.
“The CAO is a very political position itself, and it’s tough to find that type of person. If you have a council that’s very ambitious and wants to move the needle, I think they’re going to need adjustments from CAOs to adapt to what councils are trying to do.”
Recruiting and retaining chief administrators can be a problem in communities of any size. But when high turnover happens in small towns and villages where the staff and resources are already limited “I think the problem can become a lot more severe,” said Jesse Helmer, researcher and co-author of the report.
“It could be a long time before you find a new person. In a smaller place can be more difficult to find somebody who is willing to relocate to the community. And I think that is more of a concern for smaller places. They face additional challenges in recruiting. And you certainly don't want to get a reputation as a place where CAOs should avoid, because I think it would really compound some of the other challenges,” he said.
The trouble municipalities are having right now will likely increase over the next six-to-eight years as more senior administrators retire, Helmer said. In a survey for the report, CAOs were asked about finding a successor to take over when they leave, and “some of them were quite pessimistic about how easy that was going to be,” he said.
“Not to say they are irreplaceable, but people might not be interested in doing the job, there wasn't a lot of interest in it among their staff team or maybe from outside of the organization altogether. Those are particularly challenging, I think, for smaller communities.”
Before 2003, 88 per cent of CAOs in Alberta municipalities had been in the role for more than four years, according to the report. Between 2017 and 2021, over half of CAOs had a tenure of less than three years, and only 3 per cent served longer than four years.
Jeff Holmes has been the CAO of Mountain View County since 2017, making him one of the longest serving top administrators in the province.
“I've been with the organization for over 24 years, and we've always had a strong culture of growing our staff from within and providing training opportunities, providing succession opportunities for staff,” Holmes said.
“I think the encouragement and professional development that the organization has offered throughout my career is probably one of the major factors that has kept me here.”
A second factor for his longevity in the role is his family’s deep roots in the community. “I'm a fourth-generation agricultural producer on the farm. We actually homesteaded in 1893. So my family has been around as long as Mountain View County has.”
Retirement and relocation have always caused staffing issues, but increasingly political divisiveness and the uncomfortable environment it creates in council has been cited by CAOs as a major part of the problem.
“We heard loud and clear in the survey that the political dynamics in council are a leading driver whether or not (CAOs) are satisfied in their role, and the decisions to either stay or go. We also know that when there's tension, within council or between council and administration, that's the kind of environment that may lead to a CAO being terminated,” Graham said.
“I don’t know if it’s Trump-style politics or what, but we see councillors attacking each other and staff who have no credibility with council and there is nothing really that when you’re in the situation that you can do to change it,” a former CAO said in the report.
“I don’t know if it’s just watching too much CNN and stuff like that, but I’m seeing more and more of this and it really scares me.”
In democracies around the world, trust in governments and elected officials is on the decline, and political polarization is high, Graham said. While these are not uniquely Alberta municipal problems, “they create distinct problems for Alberta municipalities,” she said.
“In an environment where the political climate is getting more difficult and more tenuous, we're seeing that seep into local politics and all kinds of ways and I think it's reasonable to make a connection between that and the overall pattern that we've observed in this paper where CAOs are not lasting as long as their role.”
