Wheatland County, in addition to renovating its offices in the near future, renovated its senior management. 
At the regular meeting of County Council on October 1, council approved the reorganization of the county’s upper echelons. Senior management, those who report directly to the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), was reduced from five positions to three.
“It’s a structure you see in quite a few other municipalities and it solidifies the roles of the staff a little better,” said CAO Alan Parkin.
In addition, the departments were fused together to create three county departments; Transportation and Infrastructure Services, Agriculture, Community, and Protective Services, and Corporate and Financial Services.
Dave Churchill will head Transportation and Infrastructure as general manager, and Jim Laslo was named general manager of Agriculture, Community, and Protective Services. The position for Corporate and Financial Services remains vacant.
Transportation and Infrastructure is remaining relatively unchanged, save for the addition of the health and safety office.
“We moved it (health and safety), because that’s the department where we have the most exposure to health and safety issues, like with our road crews, construction, and graders. The lion’s share of the staff are in that area as well,” said Parkin.
The largest change was bringing together Agriculture, Community, and Protective Services under one department.
“The third is basically a new department, which is an amalgamation of different departments. We took the agriculture section, joined that with community planning and development, and protective services, because there are some synergies there,” said Parkin.
Corporate and Financial Services remains the same as before.
Though there would be some cost savings, Parkin stressed that wasn’t why the reorganization was undertaken.
“There would be minor savings, but that wasn’t the reason for the change,” said Parkin. “We wanted to realign services to be more effective.”
