Unable to fill engineer vacancy, MRC Pontiac set to terminate service agreement with municipalities

Unable to fill engineer vacancy, MRC Pontiac set to terminate service agreement with municipalities

At the MRC Pontiac council of mayors meeting on August 16, a motion was passed informing the municipalities that their agreement with the MRC  for engineering services would be coming to a close.

Kim Lesage first came to the MRC in 2018 as an engineer, but took over as interim Director General in late 2022 following the sudden departure of Bernard Roy. She made the move permanent in February.  At the time, she said that she wouldn’t keep any municipalities hanging with infrastructure projects that she was working with them on, but wouldn’t be able to take on any new projects.

Speaking to CHIP 101.9 the following week, Lesage said that there are currently at least a dozen projects on the go that she had worked on, most of them road work. The agreement signed with municipalities allows them to make use of the services of the MRC engineer for municipal projects, at a much lower rate than they would pay for a private company.  Lesage said that depending on the experience required, the difference could be in the range of up to $100 per hour.

Earlier this year, the MRC had posted the engineering position twice, but didn’t receive any qualified candidates. The job posting from March lists the salary as between $72,858 and $92,647 depending on experience. Lesage said that experienced engineers at private companies could easily make twice that, and added that a competitive hiring environment might make it difficult to attract someone to a small town. She said that it would be up to the mayors to decide whether to put out another job posting in the future.

The resolution serves as a notice to the municipalities that the agreement will be terminated in the future. Lesage estimated that it would take around two months to wrap things up.

The full interview with Lesage (4m05) is available here.