Numbers released at a recent Rural Ontario Municipal Association conference found that 12,000 municipal employees in Eastern Ontario will be eligible for retirement in the next three to five years.
The chief administrative officer for Frontenac County, Kelly Pender, is one of those employees. He’s spent the last 40 years working for municipalities. Pender says Frontenac County isn’t the only municipality that will be hiring.
“Across Ontario, about one-third of municipal staff will be eligible to retire over the next few years,” said Pender. The CAO added, “In Eastern Ontario alone, that number is 12,000. The next three years, about 50 per cent of senior administration will be eligible to retire.”
One of the positions in Frontenac County that will need to be filled in the next few years includes chief paramedic. Even though Chief Paul Charbonneau is eligible for retirement now, he says he’s sticking around for a few more years.
“I remember years ago when I was looking around you know, people said, ‘Get a government job, it’s a good job, you get a good pension, you get a good salary, you get good vacation. Municipal work is very rewarding,” said Charbonneau.
Over in South Frontenac, there are three positions that need to be filled immediately including director of development services, building inspector and fire chief. But more positions could be opening up soon as the community prepares for a retirement boom.
“We have 52 employees and our average age is 47. We currently have probably four employees who are thinking about retirement,” said Wayne Orr, chief administrative officer for South Frontenac.
Orr added, “That’s a big chunk for us pretty quickly to start trying to address and those could be anywhere within the next year or so.”
According to Orr, filling vacant positions can be a challenge for a rural community. “The challenge really is about finding people who have experience in those areas and trying to direct new people to actually start pursuing those avenues of employment,” said Orr.
Orr says in order to plan ahead, South Frontenac has teamed up with the Limestone District School Board to attend a session in April to try and get high school students to start thinking about opportunities in the municipal sector.
Back in Frontenac County, Pender says there is a succession plan but says it may not be enough.
“So there are two opportunities. One to create leaders from within, and the other is the recruitment option and neither one is going to be sufficient to fill the gap.”
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