Iqaluit City Council dumps CAO, appoints acting boss

Muhamud Hassan, who served less than three years as chief administrative officer at Iqaluit’s municipal government, has departed from his job, following a decision by Iqaluit city council to not renew his employment contract. (FILE PHOTO)

Amy Elegersma, Iqaluit’s director of recreation, will now serve as the city’s acting CAO. The city has begun a recruitment effort aimed at finding a replacement for its departed CAO, Muhamud Hassan. (FILE PHOTO)

Less than three years after he started, Muhamud Hassan is gone from the top administrative job at the City of Iqaluit, the city said yesterday afternoon in a news release.

Hassan’s current employment contract for the chief administrative officer position “is soon to expire,” and city councillors decided not to give him another one, the city said.

“The council has chosen not to renew Mr. Hassan’s contract,” the release said.

For the time being, Amy Elgersma, the director of recreation, will serve as acting CAO, through an appointment that city council made this week.

The city did not state why Iqaluit City Council chose not to renew Hassan’s contract, and said they have no more to say on the matter.

“The city will not provide any further comment or details of Mr. Hassan’s employment, on the basis that the city does not comment on any confidential personnel matters,” the news release said.

“I would like to wish Mr. Hassan the best in his future endeavours,” Mayor Madeleine Redfern said in a news release.

Hassan, who served as senior administrative officer in Sanikiluaq from 2008 to 2012, started as Iqaluit CAO on April 7, 2015.

He’s not the first Iqaluit CAO to depart his job under sudden or controversial circumstances. For the past 15 years, the top non-elected job at the City of Iqaluit has been a poisoned chalice.

Prior to Hassan’s appointment, John Mabberi-Mudonyi, the city’s senior director of corporate services, had served as acting CAO for about eight months.

That’s because in Sept. 12, 2014, city council voted to dismiss the last appointed CAO, John Hussey, who had held the CAO job for about six years, starting in November 2007.

Hussey had already served as acting CAO for most of that year, following the short-lived tenure of Clinton Mauthe.

Mauthe, hired in September 2006, lasted only five months and abruptly departed the CAO job in January 2007.

His predecessor, Ian Fremantle, also quit his job in an abrupt departure.

Fremantle, who had been hired in 2003, quit in March 2006 after city council tried to impose conditions on his employment contract that he refused to accept.

That included a requirement that he be subjected to a performance review every three months, a condition usually applied only to junior entry-level workers.

Following Fremantle resignation, somebody leaked a letter from the city’s lawyer at that time, Katherine Peterson, who said he was “an excellent administrator” with “excellent analytical skills and very strong administrative strengths” who was highly regarded by city staff.

But city council never explained their concerns about Fremantle’s work.

The CAO job is not the only senior management position at the city to be marked by recrimination and controversy.

In 2011, Michele Bertol, a dismissed senior director of lands and planning, filed a $700,000 lawsuit against the city that contained multiple embarrassing allegations about other senior managers and city councillors, including allegations of bullying, harassment, intimidation and workplace intoxication.

The city later denied all of those allegations in a statement of defence.

The city has now begun work on recruiting another CAO.

“The process is expected to be completed in the next few months,” the release said.