January 6th Shannon Geraghty was officially given the full title of Chief Administrative Officer/Treasurer for the Municipality of South Dundas.
South Dundas council held a special council meeting to make the announcement.
Geraghty, who has been treasurer for South Dundas since 2008, has held the dual role of acting CAO and treasurer since July 2015.
When Geraghty was given the dual role, it was for a trial period until the end of 2015.
Since that time, Geraghty and council have been weighing the dual role and its feasibility.
In the six lower tier municipalities of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, two other municipalities do have their chief administrative officers in dual roles, but in both cases (North Stormont and North Glengarry) the combined role is CAO/clerk.
South Dundas is the largest municipality in SD&G to have made the CAO position a dual role, and the only SD&G municipality to have combined it with the treasurer’s position.
“I know it’s a lot of work,” said Geraghty, who through succession planning efforts initiated by the previous CAO, has also been working on continuing his education, and is halfway through Western University’s Masters of Public administration program.
The 39 year old father of two plans to continue with the program, and says council has been very supportive as he continues his education.
A little more than six months ago, the treasurer’s workload was so heavy that council approved the creation of a new deputy treasurer position. And, that was before the sudden departure of the former CAO that ultimately lead to the creation of this new dual role title.
“We do realize that we are down a body in the finance department, and that will need to be assessed,” said Geraghty, adding that the impact of this dual role will have to be monitored very carefully to make sure that South Dundas’ finance department has sufficient supports in place to ensure that the municipality can continue to meet its financial obligations.
Geraghty’s first goal is to get the 2016 budget completed and approved by council.
He plans for this year’s budget process to go much more smoothly than last year’s.
“We have implemented a more efficient, streamlined process that should make things more presentable for council and for the public,” he said.
This streamlined process is similar to that of the United Counties of SD&G, which rather than inundate council with a mountain of figures, provides them with a shorter, more focused report for decision-making purposes.
Once the budget process is complete, Geraghty, like South Dundas mayor Evonne Delegarde, aims to work towards tying up all the loose ends by year end.
“I would like to continue to work on getting management, staff and council all moving forward, together,” he said.
“Council is confident that Mr. Geraghty will continue to be a great asset to South Dundas and we look forward to a successful working relationship for many years,” read Delegarde from a prepared media release at the January 6th meeting.
After reading the release, council went in camera for the remainder of the meeting.
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