Kevin Farrell - CAO

Jeff Green | May 08, 2024

Kevin Farrell started out at the bottom with Frontenac County 14 years ago, and as of last week, he completed his ascent to the top of the corporate ladder when he took over as Chief Administrative Officer from Kelly Pender on May 1st.

He had graduated from the University of Ottawa and was hired on as an intern.

“Joe [Gallivan] had started here and he hired me, under GIS, and we launched Frontenac Maps at the end of that year,” he recalls.

His internship was partially funded by the Frontenac Community Futures Development Corporation (now known as Frontenac Business Services). And once the internship period came to an end, he was hired on as a permanent staff member to manage and continue to develop Frontenac Maps and oversee GIS services for the county and the townships as well. Although he took on a new role sometime later, he remained in charge of GIS and Frontenac Maps, supervising two other GIS specialists (one based in South Frontenac and one in Central Frontenac) until last week.

“For the first few years that was my focus, and then in 2015 after Kelly Pender had come on, he was implementing a service delivery report, which included a process improvement piece, and consultants were hired to implement the Lean 6 Sigma program, and I was among the ten staff members who jumped on that, at the time.”

Lean 6 Sigma uses a model borrowed from Karate, with yellow, green and black belt levels, and with Farrell being one of two people in Frontenac County, he is able to train others and the program does not make use of consultants anymore. The approach is a way of looking at aspects of county operations with a view towards making them operate more efficiently, taking on different processes as projects, and attempting to build a culture of improvement among the entire team.

Farrell jumped in with both feet, and in 2018 took on the role of Manager of Continuous Improvement in addition to his role as GIS coordinator.

“People get tired of hearing this from me, but I like to say, that instead of ‘we’ve always done it this way’ we can say ‘how can we do it better’”.

In 2020, a month before the COVID pandemic, he started a Masters of Public Administration course at Queen’s, which he did because he was interested in the topic since he was in an administrative role already, but also with a view towards putting him in position for a more senior role at Frontenac County.

“It was supposed to be an in-class experience, but that all changed with COVID and it was all done virtually.”

He graduated at the end of 2021.

When Kelly Pender decided to move on from the CAO role, Farrell was ready to put his name forward to the consultants, who were hired by Frontenac County Council, to come up with a short list of candidates, for them to interview for the job.

He made it onto the shortlist, and along with the other candidates, underwent an interview process in front of the hiring committee, which included all four Frontenac County mayors.

“I pitched to them, who I am, what I’m about … I talked about building relationships, making connections, that’s how you get things done.”

And they chose him for the job.

He said that as he sees it, there are three major priorities that he sees on the horizon. The first is proper resourcing for Frontenac Paramedic Services “which involves the City of Kingston as well as Frontenac County, and there is a study being undertaken now that will lay out their recommendation when it comes to resourcing for the paramedics.”

“The other big one is the future of Fairmount Home, which has been to council a few times already. It is now an aging home, and the province has money available for some of the cost of building new, but it is big dollars. I know other counties, Northumberland and Prince Edward counties, they are in the midst of rebuilding, and it is big dollars. You run into that question, like when you have a car that is getting older, do you keep fixing it up or do you start to look at maybe buying new. We have a building condition report coming out later this year, so we will be able to present some current information to Council for them to consider.”

And the third priority is “pushing forward with our municipal services corporation, which is something that every municipality in Ontario is looking at and seeing Frontenac County as a leader in developing.

“It is potentially a game changer for development in our hamlets and our communities. I’ve been involved in that work all along, Joe and Kelly were always the leaders in that, getting us to where we are at. Now that we have a corporation in place, we’ve got a technical services committee that’s kind of in the weeds looking through all the details, it’s an exciting time to be part of that.”

Aside from that, he said he will continue to work with Chief Administrative Officers in the four townships, who had been meeting quarterly with his predecessor.

Farrell comes from Tyendinaga Township, near the town of Marysville, where he lives with his wife Jess and their two children.