The Town of Lunenburg will seek a new Chief Administrative Officer following Interim CAO Hilary Grant’s announcement she will step down February 25, 2025.
In a statement, Grant said she made the decision “in support of Council prioritizing the recruitment of a permanent CAO and to ensure a smooth leadership transition.”
She will return to her role as Director of Community Development.
A tender for CAO recruitment services indicates the Town aims to have a new candidate by April 2025. Grant has served as Interim CAO since May 2024, following Jamie Doyle’s resignation after less than two years in the role.
This leadership change comes as Lunenburg’s newly elected council, three months into their term, reconsiders the town’s strategic direction.
In 2020, the previous council adopted the Comprehensive Community Plan (CCP), a $220,000 initiative that established 40-year priorities through extensive public consultation, including a dozen public workshops and over 400 public contributions.
While still technically committed to the CCP, the Town of Lunenburg hasn’t produced an annual work plan for three years, unusual for a municipality. For three years, Lunenburg is the only municipality in Lunenburg County that has not published quarterly or yearly planning documents aligning initiatives with long-term goals.
Additionally, the Town has not published the Mayor’s Monthly Update newsletter, which included updates on Town priorities, since April 2024.
At the January 28 council meeting, after I asked Mayor Jamie Myra about the intended outcome of an upcoming private council offsite retreat, he said it was an opportunity for council to develop a “three-and-a-half-year strategic plan.”
These closed sessions, scheduled for February 1-2, were not announced on social media or the Town website, and no public agenda was published. Myra indicated the sessions would lead to public engagement opportunities.
“We want to get a Strategic Plan in place, we want to put it in writing, we want to let the public know where we’re headed the next three and a half years, and the CCP was a 40-year guiding document,” said Myra.
“It wasn’t actually a Strategic Plan, unfortunately. It was a guiding document. So what we’re trying to do is take parts of that, and other things we know we have in front of us, like the Electric Utility, and other things, and put a plan in place moving forward.”
Myra’s statement conflicts with the “Comprehensive Community Plan” page on the Town website which explicitly says the CCP is the Town’s Strategic Plan. The CCP’s last work plan also included several explicit action items including an Electric Utility Sustainability Review.
