City council has severed ties with its financial services manager Ken Ostraat and will be making a multitude of other organizational moves.

“He’s no longer employed by the city,” chief administrative officer (CAO) Shawn Boven told the Herald.

Boven said the city is undertaking an organizational realignment.

A job posting is being issued for the newly created position of director of corporate services at the City of Merritt. This director’s responsibilities include shouldering some of the duties of the CAO.

The city is also issuing a job posting for Boven’s former job as public works manager.

That position is being restructured as director of engineering and development.

Managing the public works department will remain part of this position, but the planning and development manager will now report to this director, Boven said.

He said currently the planning and development manager reports to the CAO.

“There’s lots of direct reports to the CAO and it hasn’t functioned well in the past,” Boven said noting the change up is designed to create a broader organizational depth and a newer senior management team.

The city is also issuing a job posting to find a replacement for Ostraat, but hasn’t made a decision as to whether or not it will fill the vacant economic development manager position.

That position’s name is changing from financial services manager to director of finance and information technology.

City council initially sought the services of the Ravenhill Group to help them find a new CAO, but have since called off the search.

“It became clear quite quickly once Shawn was in the role that he was the best fit for the organization and the community,” Merritt Mayor Neil Menard said via press release.

Menard refused to comment to the paper directly with regard to council parting ways with Ostraat, saying only that there were some difficulties.

A performance audit is currently being conducted on the Central Park improvement project, which had $300,000 in cost overruns.

Menard did not comment on whether or not these cost overruns factored in to council’s decision.