Nearly a year after combining public works and utilities with engineering into one larger department at city hall, city manager Maryse Carmichael has joined together three other areas to address the community’s growth.
City hall sent out an email recently saying Craig Hemingway, who had been the communications director, would now be the acting director of strategic growth, while Hayley Hart-Rushinko, who had been the communications and economic development officer, would now be the acting manager of communications and stakeholder relations for the city.
In a separate email to the Express, Carmichael explained that the new department of strategic growth would be a mainly outward-facing branch that combines communications, stakeholder engagement — including First Nations relations — and economic development.
Furthermore, this department will include the new position of grant writer, a role council approved during its 2024 budget deliberations.
The grant writer will research available opportunities for grants and funding for the municipality and work with other departments and/or third-party organizations to help write applications, she added. That person will also play an important role in daily stakeholder engagement activities.
Carmichael said she formed this new department to ensure the focus on community growth had the required autonomy and importance it deserved. Moreover, having the department director report directly to her office allows for clear and streamlined direction.
This is the second big change Carmichael has made to city administration’s organizational structure since she started last May, with the first change occurring last summer after she amalgamated the engineering department with the public works and utilities department to form the operations department.
The Express reported on this change in November after information about the departmental change appeared in a city council report.
“The director of strategic growth will play a pivotal role in advancing the city’s development by overseeing key areas such as economic development, communications, stakeholder relationships, including Indigenous relations, and grant funding research and application,” Carmichael said in her email.
“The director assumes a crucial position in fostering sustainable growth and enhancing the overall well-being of our community.”
Carmichael added that while Hemingway is currently the acting department director and Hart-Rushinko is the acting manager of communications, she plans to hold a competition soon to find people to fill both roles permanently.
The city manager pointed out during the November interview that her background is different from that of a regular municipal administrator.
“So, what I’m trying to do here is bring the best of all those different worlds, whether it’s the military, whether it’s the corporate world and the municipal world … and put (them) together,” she said.
Carmichael said then that she was still reviewing the composition of other departments and re-reading her notes of the tours she took during her first three months on the job. She would decide where to go in the future after she has finished her analysis.
While she said then that she might consider combining corporate services and customer service, there has been no word yet on whether that’s going to happen.
