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CHEO boss Alex Munter will not be Ottawa’s next city manager.
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After confirming publicly that he was considering the opportunity to serve at the top of the city hall org chart, the president and CEO of the Eastern Ontario children’s hospital announced Wednesday that he would be staying with CHEO.
In a hospital-wide update, Munter wrote that “while very flattering to be approached, I want to let you know that my (heart) and my focus is and will continue to be with CHEO.
“I wish Mayor Sutcliffe and council the best of luck finding a new city manager, it’s a really important role for our community.
That role was vacated by Steve Kanellakos last November, two day before the release of the LRT public inquiry report. City chief financial officer Wendy Stephanson has been serving as the council-approved, interim city manager in the months since.
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The city contracted executive headhunting firm Odgers Berndtson to support the process of selecting a permanent replacement for Kanellakos, who held the job since 2016.
Ottawa Citizen columnist Randall Denley reported last week that Munter was a potential contender, with Munter confirming to Denley that he’d been approached by the recruiting firm, and was considering the opportunity.
While Munter has headed CHEO since 2011, he would have been anything but a newcomer to the municipal governance sphere. Between 1991 and 2003, he served on Kanata city council, the former regional government and Ottawa city council, and in 2006 he ran for mayor, losing to Larry O’Brien.
Described as “the primary agent of council,” in the job description, the new city manager will be paid between $270,488.40 and $392,655.90 annually, for a job that involves connecting “the values and priorities of council with the administrative resources, operations, and alignment needed to meet those priorities.”
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According to a timeline for the city manager hiring process, laid out in a city staff report earlier this month, a confidential long-list of candidates for the position was presented May 12 to a hiring panel consisting of Mayor Mark Sutcliffe and councillors Tim Tierney, Catherine Kitts and Shawn Menard.
Over three meetings on May 19, June 2 and June 9, the panel was to conduct first and second interview rounds with selected candidates, and receive the results of reference and background checks. They would then recommend a candidate for city council to consider and give final sign-off to, with a report to council expected sometime next month.