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How do you define severance?

Reader questions the recent severance package paid to departing city manager

Editor:

I thought if a person resigned from their job there was no severance, as it was their choice to leave.

I thought severance was there to protect an employee whose employment was severed from the employer; fired, laid off, let go.

Was this not the reason for it?

How did the previous City Manager, John Stecyk, receive severance upon his own choice to resign for personal reasons?

Apart from personal reasons, it’s still resigning.

The mayor said so; so why the severance and why the astronomical amount of $170,000 after 16 months work?

It must have been an awesome 16 months.

This town cannot afford this outlandishness.

This city, or the mayor per se, needs to stop making all these confidential arrangements.

Is the mayor hiding behind the law? Is the mayor using the law to hide something?

Was the mayor desperate to fill the position? Did she just pick someone she knew? Why are we paying so much for a new city manager?

So many questions, so few answers from the mayor.

It’s all too confidential to know.

What’s so confidential about having a job?

Perhaps in the future the city can get away from contracts attached to hiring forms and move toward an attached disclosure clause that states: All Quesnel taxpayers are “employers of” said employee and are given the right to know salary and benefits (as it is more) but also any agreements and arrangements made as well.

My employer certainly did!

There are, I’m sure, educated, younger people with tuition debt who’d love to have a city manager’s job and Quesnel perhaps could save $20,000 right there alone.

Only one opinion.

Robert Wayne

Quesnel, B.C.