What About A Help Wanted Ad?

Jeff Green | Nov 14, 2013

Let me see if I have this right.

Frontenac County Council has decided to pay a consulting firm $7,000 to help them hire another consulting firm for $25,000 to $30,000 plus expenses. The second firm will have the task of recruiting someone whose salary they have already announced will be $157,000.

That $157,000 person will be the CAO of the County. Nice work if you can get it.

Oh, the salary goes up another 2% each year as the cost of living rises, which is only fair.

I have an alternative proposal. First, make the salary a little more vague. After all, I imagine a number of people might have considered doing the job for less, but now that the cat is out of the bag, every single candidate will expect to see at least $150,000 in the first year.

As to the $40,000 or more in consulting fees, there is a cheaper way.

Listing under Help Wanted: "CAO NEEDED, pay commensurate with experience and qualifications. For more information, contact Frontenac County, 613-544-9400."

There, that’s less than 20 words. We can run that for $10 a week, HST included. Even if the County needs to run it for 10 weeks, it only comes to $100.

That leaves about $39,900 in savings. The County can put that towards its reserve funds, which have reportedly dipped below $14 million.