Skip to content

Mema becoming deputy CAO

Chief financial officer given additional authority

Victor Mema, chief financial officer, could officially become the second-in-command at Nanaimo city hall.

Nanaimo city council was expected to vote Monday after press time on bylaw changes that will officially give Mema the powers of the chief administrative officer in the absence of CAO Tracy Samra.

Samra plans to go on leave for medical reasons, although it’s not yet known when that leave would begin.

She told council it would be nice to have the chief financial officer designated as a deputy CAO to make sure there’s no ambiguity over the scope of powers he can exercise, even though a person designated to act when someone is leaving gets all of the functions and powers.

Mema has previously taken on a role of deputy CAO.

Samra declined to comment to the News Bulletin about why she chose Mema to act in her stead, but said at an open meeting last week that the Community Charter requires designation of certain individuals and deputies to carry out certain tasks and not everybody can step into the role of city manager. At the moment, she sees only the CFO and chief operating officer as being able to act in that capacity over a longer period of time.

Samra also told council that legislation and the bylaw gives authorities to the CAO to determine who’s appropriate to act in one or more positions at any given time and staff and their well-being are her responsibility.

“That way you don’t have elected officials starting to get involved and union grievances and in whether or not somebody should be accommodated by moving their desk two floor down or one floor down,” she said. “We’ve seen already what happens when elected officials start to meddle in the decision-making and management of unionized staff and exempt staff at the manager and director level.”

Bylaw changes would also see John Van Horne, director of human resources, appointed as an officer, a role five other people hold, including Samra and Mema. In the Community Charter, if the city wanted to remove an officer for no reason, the threshold for doing so is higher —a two-thirds vote of council. Samra said the officer distinction identifies key positions that take on a considerable amount of risk, stress and significant duties.

Samra told the News Bulletin Van Horne was accidentally deleted from the bylaw and it’s an error that’s been corrected.