The head of the Seaterra sewage program will walk away with almost $500,000 in severance pay at the end of September.
Despite the payout, the decision to terminate Seaterra’s remaining project staff — including Albert Sweetnam — was made to cut losses, said Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps.
“It’s still a taxpayer saving of at least $1.4 million,” said Helps, who chairs the core area liquid waste management committee. “These are the hard decisions we have to make.”
Sweetnam was hired on a five-year contract in 2013 to manage a staff of more than 20 people. His $290,000 annual salary put him at the top of the Capital Regional District’s salary list for 2014.
He maintained the same pay after the sewage-treatment project was put on hold in June 2014, after Esquimalt rejected McLoughlin Point as a treatment site — even though he was managing a pared-down program with the equivalent of four full-time workers.
The project has cost taxpayers $847,000 since then, Helps said. The cost of maintaining the project staff was upward of $2 million over what remained of the contract.
“I couldn’t, and the committee couldn’t, justify that. [The dismissals were] in response to hearing loud and clear from the public that they were concerned about expenses,” she said.
The CRD announced Sweetnam’s departure Friday afternoon, following a meeting of the Seaterra Commission, which has been renamed the core area wastewater treatment program commission.
“With the critical mass gone and the project back in the planning stage, it just didn’t make sense to keep the office open and the project manager with us,” commission chairwoman Brenda Eaton said.
By the end of September, all staff will have completed their assignments and the office will close, she said.
The commission office space will be leased out by the CRD. Almost all the contracts specific to the project have been terminated. Outstanding items remaining in October will shift to CRD staff for wrap-up.
Total severance for the four remaining staff, including Sweetnam, totals $600,000, Eaton said.
“I want to emphasize [Sweetnam] has done extraordinary work,” Eaton said. “He’s an outstanding individual, with outstanding negotiating skills. He has been incredibly professional and added value to the project.”
The representative for King County, Washington, on the Seaterra Commission, Pam Elardo, has resigned, citing her frustration over the lack of progress on implementing sewage treatment in the capital region.
“King County has advocated for decades that Victoria collect and treat its sewage. There are requirements established by the Canadian federal and provincial governments and a local commitment to proceed with this investment; however, a clear path forward at the local level to site and construct a facility backed by a firm mandate from the provincial government is not evident,” Elardo says in her letter of resignation.
“The CRD had an approved wastewater strategy in early 2013. Despite the project team and commission’s best efforts, and the outstanding leadership by Mr. Sweetnam, the implementation plan was eventually stalled, and then scrapped. It appears that construction and operation of a wastewater treatment system is now years, if not decades, away,” Elardo wrote.
Helps called Elardo’s resignation unfortunate, but said she disagreed that progress is not being made and said she has been providing U.S. officials with monthly updates.
“I’m sorry for her frustration, but we are making progress at a rapid clip,” Helps said. “So I think, from a faraway point of view, it looks like nothing is happening, but I get responses from the [U.S.] ambassador and from folks who are watching us closely both in Seattle and Vancouver saying thanks for the monthly updates and thanks for making good progress.”
The CRD has a new process underway, identifying and assessing potential treatment sites. According to timelines tied to provincial and federal funding, implementation will begin in late 2017. The commission will be responsible for hiring project staff again at that time.
If there’s a lesson to be learned, Helps said, it’s about not putting the cart before the horse. “I think it was just unfortunate circumstances. Staff were hired before the project was 100 per cent sewn up,” she said. “Before we truly move on to the implementation phase, we’re going to make sure we have a project that’s 100 per cent solid.”
