Changes made to town's financial services department

Changes are being made to the town’s finance department, including a new treasurer and deputy treasurer.

A bylaw was passed during the Aug. 10 meeting of Amherstburg town council that added the title and duties of treasurer to Yufang Du, the manager of accounting services and the duties and title of deputy treasurer added to the supervisor of accounting services. The latter is staffed by Mei Na Chen.

Osborne has had the duties and title of chief financial officer (CFO) added to her roles as deputy CAO and director of development services.

A report from Osborne pointed out the director of corporate services/CFO/treasurer Tracy Prince left those positions June 10. With that departure, Osborne said it created an opportunity to review the corporate services departmental structure. 

“The finance function has experienced significant growth in responsibilities across many areas but most notably related to capital planning, reserve management, grant reporting and cash flow oversight. This is largely driven by the Town’s transition to a multi-year capital plan, which has currently been developed for seven years,” the written report states. “Developing a multi-year capital plan incorporates all of the financial tools available to the municipality, including the increased use of reserve funding, and expanded grant fundings, resulting in increased reporting and oversight requirements. In addition, legislative changes to the Development Charge Act and new directives under Bill 72, Buy Ontario Act, 2025, have placed additional workload on finance staff, which must be executed.”

Osborne’s report added the finance department has experienced additional pressures over the past several months due to the loss of the resources due to illness and/or departure.

“The team has been under tremendous pressure, excessive overtime for finance and paid overtime for other departmental resources asked to assist. Most concerning has been the need for weekly meetings to determine what day-to-day work and or annual projects must be postponed, in some cases by months, to balance current priorities of the day. This situation is

unsustainable and must be addressed in order for the department to function

appropriately on a go forward basis,” the report states. “The first measure which was taken to move forward with appropriate resourcing was the engagement of a financial consultant to specifically assist to address critical functions such as the 2025 year-end close, the 2025 external audit and the issuance of previously approved debt financing for the South Fire Hall and water reclamation projects. Joe Mancina, who was the former CAO at the City of Windsor and previously held the positions of CFO/treasurer, deputy treasurer and senior manager of accounting services began his engagement with the Town in mid-April.”

Other changes are the creation of a manager of purchasing, capital and grants, creating one additional senior financial analyst, the creation of a temporary part-time financial clerk and the removal of information technology from reporting to the CFO and report directly to the CAO on a temporary basis.

“The removal of the director of corporate services position provided an opportunity to add a manager of purchasing, capital and grants as well as a senior financial analyst with an overall impact to the operating budget of approximately $25,000. The 2027 budget will reflect this approved increase as part of the contractual obligations portion of the budget,” the report added. “The 2026 cost for these changes, along with other one-time costs, did not have a funding source identified during in camera. Currently administration is reviewing the salary gapping as well as overall corporate surplus for 2026 to determine if all costs associated with this transition can be addressed through these means. Should there be a need for a fund source to resolve any of these costs it will be provided to council for direction.”

Councillor Peter Courtney said town council had to figure out a game plan and staff figured out this was the best way to proceed. He said his preference is not to decide such matters in-camera and believed this was more of a budgetary matter. He questioned what the impact will be on the town’s budget.

Courtney said new provincial legislation and extra work is causing new positions to be created in Amherstburg and wondered if other municipalities are doing likewise.

CAO Valerie Critchley said she is a huge believer in the concept when any staff member leaves, the organizational structure should be looked at. She believed it would be “irresponsible to simply post something and go forward with the same structure because that’s the way it always has been.”

“I believe it is incumbent upon us to look at the structure and see what works best in the current state with the skills we have in our corporation,” said Critchley.

Critchley said such a review happens regularly in municipalities and not just in finance.

“This happens all the time and I believe it’s the best way to look at the resources in the municipalities and the skillsets. We are a lean team. As you know, we’re not several layers thick of union and non-union staff,” said Critchley. “We may be lean but I believe we have amazing skillsets here.”

Osborne said Amherstburg staff have met with colleagues in LaSalle, adding the latter has added staff and a supervisor to accommodate new workloads. Other municipalities have more modern systems than Amherstburg, Osborne added, comparing it to looking up information in an encyclopedia instead of searching on Google. 

“We’ve got about 37 different business processes that are old, antiquated and time consuming. We have a skilled set of staff who can actually do more. They can get to those other things that people are asking us to get to but right now we can’t because we can’t get out of our own way for key-punching information,” said Osborne.

Policy updates are coming before town council, including one adopted Aug. 10 that should save weeks of work. Osborne added there is extensive overtime that financial staff have been putting in with 11 weeks of union and non-union staff overtime since January.

“There’s a lot of heavy lifting done by this team. They absolutely need the resources and it’s one of the reasons I agreed to take on this additional work in order to allow those new positions to be created at a net impact of this community of only $25,000,” said Osborne.

Courtney said it was an “impromptu solution that was thrown on us very quickly” and reiterated his position that it should have been done during budget.

“I didn’t want action on it and I wanted to figure out another solution,” he said.

Councillor Diane Pouget said she had “very serious concerns” about how things transpired. She noted Osborne authored the report and stated she is now the CFO.

“When did you get the promotion and why hasn’t this been made public?” asked Pouget.

Critchley responded by telling Pouget “all of council is aware this happened in April at an in-camera session of council and, Councillor Pouget, I believe that you were there.” Pouget contended it happened March 9, something Critchley disagreed with.

“It did not happen March 9, to correct the record,” the CAO stated. “Council received information in-camera March 9 and the final organizational structural structure was brought to council in April.”

Pouget said it was never made public, with clerk Kevin Fox stating when it came forward in March, it was done so as information. When direction was given in April, a public report was requested “and that is what is before us tonight.”

Pouget said the audit and finance committee was concerned about a “control breach,” something she accused of being “downplayed.” Mayor Michael Prue questioned what that had to do with the issue at hand of the financial department restructuring.

“This question came up and audit and finance and I corrected the record at that time,” said Fox. “I’m happy to send that along to council as well. The auditor is reporting that there was a dual level of approval that existed with the treasurer several treasurers ago, several years ago. At that time, there was no actual wrongdoing that was identified. It was simply a process that needed improvements. It was identified, the treasurer acknowledged it and corrected it and it was closed.”

Fox added that matter was fully disclosed to the committee and the council of the day and is part of the financial records of that year. Critchley said a former audit contained a note about a sign-off control and there was no untoward action, adding it was noted to the committee in either 2024 or 2025, though Fox believed it was earlier than that, possibly in 2021 when former treasurer Justin Rousseau was still employed by the Town of Amherstburg.

Pouget pressed on, stating she only knew Osborne to work as deputy CAO and “involved with economic development and tourism.” Critchley said the town has to be careful regarding in-camera deliberations but all council members were made aware of changes being made in April “and Councillor Pouget was at that meeting so she should have been aware.”

Prue said he didn’t know where the matter was going but claimed Pouget was “trying to dig up old things against either Ms. Osborne, the finance department or something and I can’t figure out why. It’s not making any sense.” Pouget said she was speaking on the report and “those things beg questions,” and added the minutes from the July 22 meeting were not before town council.

“It all ties together with the report,” she said.

Prue wanted questions to be on the restructuring and not items from several years ago. 

Councillor Don McArthur thanked administration for bringing the report forward that explained the restructuring and why it was necessary. McArthur referenced an earlier third party presentation on audited financial statements stating “we have solid, robust internal controls in place.”

“Can they be better? Of course they can be better,” said McArthur. “If there’s one department that this town, of all the towns in Ontario want in tip top shape given our history, it’s finance. We’ve made incredible strides over the past eight years but prior to that, there were some issues. We all remember those headlines.”

Demands on finance staff are becoming more complex, McArthur added, and the workload has changed.

“This is the thing that should concern people, not that we’re restructuring, but this report says our financial staff work excessive overtime. They have weekly meetings to determine what work has to be postponed, sometimes for months. These pressures have been building 18-24 months. It’s pretty clear, when it comes to finance, we need more feet on the street. We need people crunching the numbers, reading the reports and getting things ready.”

McArthur said a director’s position has been eliminated and replaced it with people who can help get the work done. 

“They are not only putting people in places where they need to be to get the jobs done, to fulfill our obligations to be solid financial stewards of this town, they’ve already identified 37 business process improvements, some involving automation and technology. They are getting that house in order.”

McArthur asked “is this enough” with Osborne adding they have identified the resources they need and are looking for “low cost options” to get work done. Once they get through that, Osborne said they believe software improvements that need to occur as “we are limited in our systems and we are limited in our automation.”

“There is abundant opportunity to create space and ability to take on more when we stop doing useless things,” she said.

Changes made to town's financial services department

By Ron Giofu