Bassi-Kellett takes city hall reins
New senior administrative officer wants to examine merging city departments
Shane Magee
Northern News Services
Friday, March 17, 2017
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Sheila Bassi-Kellett has been busy the past two weeks after starting as the city's top civil servant.
Sheila Bassi-Kellett, Yellowknife's new senior administrative officer, began her role March 6. - |
As senior administrative officer, she oversees operations of the municipality with more than 200 full- and part-time employees.
An early task is to find ways to meet a council directive to slash spending by one per cent - or about $350,000 - this year. While it's a small amount compared to the overall $80.6-million operations and maintenance budget this year, she wants to avoid across-the-board cuts.
"It's not necessarily a good way to do things to take a little bit off of everything - then you do a mediocre job of everything," she said. "I like to look for targeted areas where the budget may be underutilized and where it doesn't impact programs and services.
That's very important to me."
She said the city has already realized some savings from positions that had been vacant for several months.
The city has six departments: Corporate services; planning and development; communications and economic development; community services; public safety; and public works and engineering.
Would she consider merging departments to save costs?
"Well it's something I want to look at," she said. "I come from a long history of working on organizational design and organizational development, so I want to look at how we're set up, how we can best respond to issues and things that the public has an interest in, how we can be effective in providing a good service and if there are opportunities."
A review is already underway of the city's planning and development department, similar to the review of its bylaw enforcement division two years ago.
She hopes to draw from the planning and lands review when weighing potential changes to how the city's bureaucracy is organized.
Bassi-Kellett most recently ran a consulting company in Yellowknife. She had spent more than two decades working for the GNWT, including stints as assistant deputy minister with the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs and deputy minister of Human Resources until she was let go in 2014 in circumstances that are unclear.
Bassi-Kellett is part of a shift in city personnel in several high-profile portfolios. In September, Dennis Kefalas stepped back from the senior administrative officer position to return to the role of director of public works and engineering. A new fire chief started in December. The director of planning and development decamped at the end of the year and that role remains unfilled.
At the same time as ordering cuts, city council has added more tasks to administration's plate. Some of that spending is directed to addressing social issues in the city core and the impact those issues have had on emergency services.
Bassi-Kellett said she's meeting with her senior staff to lay out a plan to deal with council's priorities and those newly added budget items.
"I want to pull all of those together working with the senior management team to have a coherent plan that council can see, that council knows their marching orders, that citizens can see and be aware of the things we're doing, driven by council's five priorities to really mark progress," she said.
