Recent budget and financial disclosure documents from the Township of Langley reveal a mounting expenditure on wages, driven in large part by an increase in turnover among senior staff. The Township’s total reported wage bill in 2022 of $103 million increased by 12.6% to reach $116 million in 2023, yet few residents would say that services have improved by 12.6%.

The most prominent Township employees to depart since the inauguration of Mayor Eric Woodward in October 2022 include the CAO Mark Bakken and Senior Advisor to Council Bill Storie, but the list of departed civil servants is much longer. Many at the Township are deeply concerned about this exodus—not only because of the immeasurable loss of expertise, competence, and deep community knowledge, but also the quantifiable financial cost of the severance and salary continuance packages (i.e. continuing to pay people full wages not to work). 

The Township’s Statements of Financial Information (SOFI), which disclose remuneration for employees earning over $75,000, confirm that the senior civil servants whose dismissals are said to have been directed by Mayor Woodward all received severance or salary continuance packages (not what one would expect if they had quit entirely of their own accord), but also reveals the amounts. 

From the reports available to date (the 2023 SOFI report can be found buried on p. 231 here) we determined a total cost of severance for fourteen of these former employees of at least $1.8 million—including 18, 20 and even 24-month salary continuance payments which will continue to go out until the end of 2024.

The full cost of these dismissals will actually be much higher as the figure does not include a number of senior civil servants whose last day was in 2024, like CAO Mark Bakken, Director of Engineering Roeland Zwaag and Director of Corporate Administration Steve Scheepmaker.

Given their strong resumes, skills and reputations, many former Township staff have landed great jobs with other municipalities or organizations—while Township taxpayers are saddled with the burden of paying them months or in some cases years worth of full salary to not work at the Township.

For example, the cost to taxpayers for “retiring” four senior Fire Department personnel was $426,130. Specifically, during Mayor Woodward’s first six months of office, Fire Chief Stephen Gamble, Assistant Fire Chief Andy Hewitson, Deputy Fire Chief–Operations Bruce Ferguson and District Chief Bryant Ross all left the TLFD. The very next month, in July 2023, the first of the no-bid Fire Equipment contracts worth $11.5 million was approved by Council, with the newly-hired Fire Chief putting through the paperwork, and Woodward’s political ally as sales rep for the sole-source contract.

According to the currently-available public financial disclosure documents, the single most expensive person to depart the Township under Mayor Woodward has been Ramin Seifi. After 23 years of service with the Township, Seifi had come to manage 10 departments with over 300 staff as the General Manager of Engineering and Community Development. Following Seifi’s exit at a taxpayer cost of $497,994 (two full years of salary continuance) he was hired as a Director by The Engineers and Geoscientists of BC.

The next most expensive person Mayor Woodward apparently wanted gone was Shannon Harvey-Renner, the 23-year veteran Director of Human Resources. Although her last day at the Township was in April 2023, the Township will continue to send her paychecks through the end of 2024. The total amount the Woodward administration is paying Harvey-Renner not to work for the Township is $345,733.

Like Bakken, Storie, Seifi and Harvey-Renner, most of these ex-employees had served under multiple mayors and rose through the ranks by virtue of their professional performance. Looking at the list of the fourteen former staff as a whole, the average length of their service with the Township of Langley was 21 years.

If these departures had been mere retirements or professionals seeking other opportunities, there would be no need for the severance payments and salary continuances. It seems clear that following the October 2022 election which brought Mayor Woodward and his Contract with Langley council majority to power, someone wanted to clean house, especially of those employees with a long and proven record of competence and honest service.

Faced with information about the large number of layoffs at the Township, defenders of Mayor Woodward have claimed that them as part of an effort to find savings and efficiencies, but the opposite is true according to both the financial statements and the logic of administrative management:

The reality is that the 12.6% increase in the Township’s wage bill is a big contributor to the 6.9% tax hike passed by Woodward’s council majority in 2024—compared to a 5.4% increase the previous year and 3.0% in 2022 under Mayor Jack Froese.

Achieving savings in a bureaucracy while maintaining service quality is accomplished by identifying bloat in middle management, not by getting rid of frontline staff, nor by firing heads of departments or other senior leaders who will need to be replaced by similarly well-compensated individuals. 

Among such well-compensated new additions to the Township’s payroll are members of Woodward’s entourage, including his own mayoral campaign manager, Dan Sheel (the first person to receive Woodward’s thanks in his inaugural address to Council) and Nick Hosseinzadeh, a former Constituency Assistant for the BC Liberals who now serves as Woodward’s Chief of Staff. In 2023, Sheel collected $196,996 in pay from the Township while Hosseinzadeh took home $120,978. 

As we approach the end of Eric Woodward’s second year as Mayor of the Township of Langley, a disturbing picture of his leadership emerges:

• A culling of critical civil servants with the most qualifications, experience and institutional knowledge
• Over $1.8 million doled out in severance packages and monthly paychecks still going out for people who no longer work for the Township
• A mounting wage bill (up 12.6%) for the Township and accelerating tax rate increases (under Jack Froese 3.0% in 2022, but under Eric Woodward 5.4% in 2023 and 6.9% in 2024)
• The hiring of new staff with demonstrated personal loyalty to the Mayor.

The dangerous situation we Township residents find ourselves in is that as long as Mayor Woodward has a council willing to rubber-stamp anything he wants brought forward—and voters and media aren’t asking enough probing questions, taking him to account and demanding transparency—the stage is set for taxpayer resources to increasingly be used as a plaything of the Mayor, and for the decisions which shape our lives and futures to be made not for the interests of the public, but according to Woodward’s personal whims.