Top Job In Frontenac County Goes To Kelly Pender

Jeff Green | Apr 09, 2014

Until March 14, Kelly Pender was the Chief Administrative Officer in Huntsville. On that day, he tendered his resignation, citing family reasons.

“The Pender family is seeing a lot of changes in their lives, with our oldest getting married and our youngest graduating from university,” he said. “It’s time for the Pender family to think about its future,” he told Allison Brownlee of the Huntsville Forester at the time.

He also said that he had no “immediate plans” to leave the municipality and speculated about working on his garden and sharpening his golf game.

Those plans seemed to change 10 days later, when Pender was in Sydenham for the final stage in the search process for the CAO post in Frontenac County, and then on April 2, Frontenac County announced that he had been hired to oversee Frontenac County and its $40 million plus annual budget.

While the budget of the town of Huntsville is much smaller, around $13 million last year, Kelly Pender oversaw over $32 million in infrastructure spending in the lead-up to the G8 summit, which was partially held in Huntsville in 2010.

Pender was compensated to the tune of $144,000 in 2013, and while his compensation package as CAO of Frontenac County is not public knowledge, last fall Council approved a 6-tier salary grid for the CAO position, with wages ranging from $142,000 to $157,000 plus cost of living increases each year. At the time, the consultant who recommended the adoption of the grid said that it was likely that a new CAO would be located at least a few steps up from the lowest tier of the grid.

When contacted, Frontenac County Warden Bud Clayton said that Kelly Pender was the unanimous choice of the hiring committee, which included four members of the council.

“We are confident that Kelly will be able to work with Council to fulfil its vision and strategic goals,” Clayton said in a press release that was posted on April 2 on the Frontenac County website.

Kelly Pender is not new to Eastern Ontario. Before taking on the top job in Huntsville, he was the CAO of the Town of Perth for seven years before he left for Huntsville in 2008.

Former Perth mayor, Dennis Cordick, who was a member of the committee that hired Pender for the Town of Perth, had only good things to said about him.

“Frontenac County is very fortunate to have hired him. He is very knowledgeable, and very congenial. His sole purpose is to meet the needs of the council and the taxpayers as well. He is adept at dealing with the multi-faceted situation that he will be dealing with at Frontenac County,” said Cordick in a telephone interview.

Pender's personal connections to the region extend to his educational background. He attended both Queen's and St. Lawrence Colleges as well as the University of Toronto and Carleton University.

While there had been no indication, at least to reporters covering Huntsville Council, that Pender was going to leave, there had been tension between him and council in 2013 over a decision by Huntsville Council to scrap $60,000 in performance bonuses for town staff, and a decision to freeze wages this year. However, he told the press when he left that the wage freezes had nothing to do with his decision to leave.

The only hint about what may have been said behind closed doors is a cryptic statement by the Mayor of Huntsville, Claude Doughty, after he said he would not comment on Pender's decision to resign.

“I can’t comment on why I can’t comment,” Doughty said.

Kelly Pender will start his tenure as CAO of Frontenac County on Monday, May 5.

The County has been overseen by Treasurer and interim CAO Marian Vanbruinessen since the departure of Liz Savill on November 15, 2013.