Former municipal administrator Peter Kent resigned this week, after more than three months on medical leave. He will receive a compensation package that Mayor Ted Nebbeling described as "fair for the municipality and for Mr. Kent." "He can’t retire on it, but he can live comfortably for a little while," Nebbeling said. Kent had asked that details of the package not be released. Although the decision to resign was apparently Kent’s, Nebbeling said the municipality had to offer him a compensation package. "He has no reason to resign. He could have continued on sick leave and then come back," Nebbeling told Mountain FM Tuesday. However, when Director of Finance and Acting Administrator Drew Stotesbury announced that he was resigning to accept a position in the private sector the municipality was put under pressure to find an administrator. "We didn’t ask him to resign," Nebbeling said of Kent. "We asked him how we could deal with this." Nebbeling said if Kent had stayed with the municipality another three years he would have been entitled to a pension. In resigning he gave up those benefits. "You can’t expect a person to walk away from a career without something that allows them time to decide what they are going to do." Nebbeling said there was no grounds for firing Kent. Kent’s salary was more than $100,000 annually. He had been administrator for nearly 10 years. In February Whistler council released policy statements that define the relationship between staff and council, putting special emphasis on the role of the administrator. One of the points included in the policy statement is that council will now review the administrator’s performance annually. Mel Shelley, who has been investigating tensions among municipal staff and within municipal hall, has suggested that the job of administrator may be too much for one person to handle for more than three or four years.
