The city signed six severance agreements last year and paid out between seven and 20 months’ salary and benefits for each, according to the 2020 SOFI published last week.
That compares to three such agreements in 2019, two in 2018 and one in 2017.
By contrast, the City of Vancouver signed one severance agreement last year and paid out three months' pay, according to its report.
Severance is a form of compensation paid to employees when their job is terminated through no fault of their own.
While the annual reports don't provide details about severance agreements, the NOW has reported on four senior managers who left the City of Burnaby with no explanation in 2020 but still ended up on last year’s so-called “sunshine list.”
The municipality’s top three IT managers – chief information officer Shari Wallace and deputy directors John Cooke and Jacek Kaim – left in July.
But their combined pay in 2020 was still $426,082, according to the SOFI.
After their departure, the city declined to share any details on the matter.
City communications staffer Marie Ishikawa said only that the city was “undergoing a departmental reorganization.”
The NOW reached out to Wallace, but she said she was unable to comment due to the terms of her release.
According to organizational charts included in its five-year financial plans, the city appears to have cut the IT department's deputy director positions.
A March 2020 chart shows two deputies and one assistant deputy answering to Wallace, while a March 2021 chart included in the city’s most recent five-year plan shows only managers, senior managers and a vacant assistant deputy director position reporting to new CIO Bachar Khawajah.
When the city laid off more than 1,500 union employees – but no managers – last April in response to massive revenue losses linked to COVID-19, Mayor Mike Hurley said the issue with cutting managers was contracts that require severance, usually based on years of service.
“Sometimes that (severance) can be more expensive. … Most managers at the city have been here a long time,” Hurley told the NOW in April 2020.
Three months later, the IT department’s leadership team was gone.
Asked whether the move had been a cost-saving measure, city communications manager Chris Bryan sent an emailed statement:
"The city’s IT department has been reorganized to ensure it continues to meet the IT needs of both city staff and the broader community. Overall staffing costs in 2020 for this department was $11.9 million compared to $12.5 million the year prior."
Wallace and her deputies were not the only senior staff to disappear from the city without explanation last year.When former fire Chief Joe Robertson left the city in late March after 30 years of service, the city declined to say even whether he had retired, resigned or been terminated.
But the 2020 SOFI shows the city paid him $194,060 last year, which suggests he, like Wallace and her deputies, signed an agreement that included compensation.
In Robertson’s case, however, the move was clearly not a cost-cutting measure since the compensation paid to the fire department’s chiefs and deputy chiefs in 2020 was more than $200,000 higher than in 2019 – and current fire Chief Chris Bowcock made more last year than Robertson ever did as chief, according to past SOFI reports.
The NOW has filed multiple Freedom of Information requests in an attempt to shed light on the departure of an increasing number of senior staff who leave the city and are then paid hundreds of thousands of dollars after they are gone.
The city has blocked the requests citing privacy legislation, and the requests are now with the province's privacy commissioner.
Follow Cornelia Naylor on Twitter @CorNaylor
Email cnaylor@burnabynow.com
