The City of Lloydminster has announced Rick McDonald will be the Interim City Manager.
“Rick comes with a broad perspective of experience from past, serving in the provincial civil service and worked with several different municipalities and organizations outside of government as well,” says Mayor Gerald Aalbers.
Mayor Aalbers says this has been in the works for a few weeks now and that McDonald has been brought up to speed on certain issues.
“We’ve had a chance to brief him on several of the items happening in our city, including the Waste Water Treatment Plant. He’s certainly aware of the Cuff report, so there’s a lot of things that will play into his action here.”
McDonald has experience in many other municipalities, saying “coming in new, you don’t know all the issues and all the people and certainly it will take some time for that to settle down but other than that I’m fairly confident that I will be able to do whatever we need to do to make sure that the programs and the services in the city are carried out and the city council has the information it needs to make good decisions.”
The audit done by George Cuff outlined some issues between city administration and city council.
“The first order of business will be to build trust between myself and administration and council. It will take a little bit of time.”
However, McDonald adds that while the audit outlined issues that needed to be focused on that the city is moving in the right direction.
“I’m very positive the city will be maintained, and improvements in city administration will be made.”
McDonald outline three things that were key for a good working relationship between administration and council:
- Transparency
- Cooperation
- Team Work
“Council and the administration are a team. We have one goal and that is providing programs and services for the community.”
McDonald adds that he is “looking forward to working with [the] community and region.”
McDonald’s contract will be completed in October, and Mayor Aalbers says the search for a full time City Manager will continue.
“We’re trying to follow a methodology of one step, two step and that would be our third step but we haven’t engaged that step completely yet, so that will be forthcoming and it is a priority as well.”
