Toronto's new city manager plans major shake-up, new chief of staff position

City staff are bracing for shake-ups at city hall under the leadership of Toronto's new city manager, CBC Toronto has learned.

Chris Murray, who became the city's top bureaucrat in August, is expected to implement upcoming "organizational changes," including restructuring city divisions and hiring a chief of staff, according to a memo written by Murray obtained by CBC News.

Several city insiders noted this is a "new" senior position for Toronto's city manager's office, which currently includes Murray, three deputy city managers, and the chief financial officer, along with multiple other offices and divisions.

CBC Toronto has obtained a copy of the Oct. 23 memo Murray sent to various senior staff and council members. In order for staff to support council's priorities and improve service delivery, city leaders must align the administrative structure to a goal of boosting the city's "overall organizational effectiveness," wrote Murray, who was previously Hamilton's city manager for nearly a decade.

He cited a November 2004 report on reviewing the city's administrative structure from former mayor David Miller's time in office — a document which outlined various "restructuring goals."

Those include facilitating residents' access to city services, supporting council's priorities, and increasing collaboration across city services.

"These outcomes are still relevant and inform our planning as we make additional changes," Murray wrote in the memo, which stresses the need for "organizational changes" and "modernization" at city hall.

Strengthened office could 'serve the city well'

One of the planned changes includes replacing the executive management division currently reporting to Murray with a new office of the chief of staff.

Alongside the deputy city managers, the successful candidate for the new role will finalize the office's mandate and develop a structure that will "produce further efficiencies," Murray wrote.

According to city spokesperson Beth Waldman, the role comes with a salary of roughly $196,000 to $221,000.

While she confirmed it is a "new" position, she stressed it's technically a realignment, and will oversee the city's resilience office, strategic communications, transformation office, civic innovation office, strategic and corporate policy and Toronto's office of partnerships.

A job posting, which closed on Nov. 8, noted it will involve resolving day-to-day council issues while influencing the overall strategic agenda.

The role, as part of a strengthened city manager's office, could "serve the city well," said Michael Fenn, a retired deputy minister of municipal affairs and former municipal chief administrator in both Hamilton and Burlington.

Fenn, who knows Murray from his time in Hamilton, called him a "capable, professional public servant."

"I have a lot of confidence in his judgment on things of this kind," Fenn said.

Any organization the size of the city of Toronto needs "periodic refreshing," he added, though that doesn't necessarily mean layoffs, but rather a shake-up of where and how employees are working. (According to Waldman, no "broad" changes or layoffs are planned.)

"Given the complexity of the city's governance structure … there's merit to having a position like this," echoed municipal affairs specialist Kim Wright, the vice-president of public affairs at Hill+Knowlton in Toronto. "We'll see how it unfolds when it actually happens."

Wright also said the change makes sense given the "revamp" expected for the city's entire governance structure.

"This was a structure that was based on a 40-to-50-person council," she said. "Now that it's a 26-member council, everything from committees to sub-committees — all of that will have to be looked at."

Staffing levels, she added, will likely be changed in the wake of Premier Doug Ford's council cuts, which shrank the number of Toronto city councillors from a planned 47-member system to 25, plus the mayor, for the 2018 municipal election.

Murray's memo also noted other possible changes being explored "in the coming months," including organizational changes in the human resources division, and potentially moving various city branches under different umbrellas.