Who comes after Steve Kanellakos? Council is looking for their next city manager

The job comes with a salary range between $270,488.40 and $392,655.90.

Council is looking for the city’s next top bureaucrat.

A hiring panel of councillors and the mayor met Friday, two months after the abrupt resignation of city manager Steve Kanellakos, to kick off the process of finding his permanent replacement.

They should be in a position by May to recommend to council a preferred candidate for the job, which comes with a salary range between $270,488.40 and $392,655.90. Sitting at the top of the city’s org chart, the city manager reports to the mayor and council and is responsible for leading the execution of their priorities for the city’s nearly 13,000 employees.

Chief financial officer Wendy Stephanson has been steering the ship as the council-approved interim city manager since Nov. 30. Kanellakos resigned “effective immediately” the day before, and that morning, Justice William Hourigan released his report on the findings of the public inquiry into LRT Stage 1. The report had some harsh words about Kanellakos, including that he engaged in a deliberate effort to mislead council about the trial running of the system, and then provided the commission of inquiry a dishonest justification for his conduct at the time.

The city is contracting executive headhunting firm Odgers Berndtson to support the hiring process, including the preparation of a long list of candidates and helping the hiring panel of Mark Sutcliffe and councillors Tim Tierney, Catherine Kitts and Shawn Menard as they narrow down their choices and interview frontrunners.

Members of council were invited to submit preliminary comments on the desired qualifications for the job, which were published with names withheld. Two of the five respondents suggested the hire should be external, while Sutcliffe said he had no preference on that.

“Personal experience plus feedback from employees and residents suggests a culture shift is needed in the city organization to restore confidence and faith in its function, so it may be worth including that as part of the new city manager’s mandate,” one councillor wrote.

“I favour internal candidates typically, but with recent history, I think it’s worth seeking candidates externally this time (unless there is an exceptional internal candidate).”

Suggested another: “We need to recruit someone who is already understood to have the public interest at heart. Perhaps a CEO of a major local institution that is beloved?”

Thanks to the province’s “strong mayor” legislation of last year, Sutcliffe had the power to name Kanellakos’s replacement and the new top planner without involving his council colleagues. But in keeping with his commitment not to use the new provincially imposed powers, he delegated this authority to council.