After ending the employment of five managers and one junior staff member last week, city CAO Shari Lichterman has clarified that all terminations were considered to be without cause.
“I don’t want to diminish the years of service and the work that they’ve done,” she said. “This is about change, but it’s not to disparage the good work that they’ve done over the years.”
The six terminations were Lichterman’s decision, she clarified, using her authority as CAO.
“It was within my authority, but I do it in collaboration and co-operation with mayor and council,” she said.
Although Lichterman said she consulted with Mayor Paul Lefebvre prior to the terminations, she did not give city council as a whole advance notice, with their latest closed door meeting taking place on Dec. 9.
Lichterman clarified that she has had discussions with council members since yesterday.
News that several city managers lost their jobs trickled into the newsroom throughout Thursday. The tips were subsequently verified using both leaked emails and reliable sources who requested anonymity.
By Friday morning, Sudbury.com had narrowed in on the names of five city managers whose employment was terminated, which Lichterman verified as accurate.
These five city managers, who have a combined experience of more than 70 years with the city, include:
- Fire Services Deputy Chief Jesse Oshell: According to his LinkedIn account, Oshell has been a City of Greater Sudbury employee since 2015, starting out as assistant deputy fire chief. He served a 2019-20 stint as acting deputy fire chief before becoming a deputy fire chief in April 2020.
- Paramedic Services Deputy Chief Melissa Roney: She has been with the city for 24 years, and has served as deputy chief of Emergency Services since 2018. Late last year, she earned a President’s Award during the Ontario Association of Paramedic Chiefs’ annual awards event.
- Corporate Services general manager Kevin Fowke: He has been with the city for 17 years and served as Corporate Services general manager since February 2017. He served as interim CAO during the months leading up to the hiring of CAO Shari Lichterman in early 2025.
- Engineering Services director David Shelsted: Although he doesn’t have a LinkedIn account, Shelsted has been on the Sunshine List as a municipal employee since 2010, at which time he was listed as a “roads engineer.”
- Project manager Miranda Edwards: She worked in the city’s engineering department and has been on the Sunshine List as a municipal employee since 2019.
(The Sunshine List begins tracking public employees’ salaries as soon as they hit $100,000.)
Where Fowke’s role was eliminated, with its functions absorbed by other managers, the other four managers will be replaced, albeit in some cases with a different job description.
A sixth employee, a junior staff member who worked with Fowke in Corporate Services, also had their employment terminated on Thursday.
“That was completely due to the decision to eliminate the general manager of Corporate Services role,” Lichterman said. “Therefore the function that directly supported that role was eliminated along with it.”
Since the employment of all six staff members was terminated without cause, Lichterman said they will receive termination packages which will be negotiated. These totals will end up appearing on the 2026 Sunshine List released in late March 2027.
According to the latest Sunshine List for 2024, Oshell’s salary was $171,899, Roney’s salary was $168,056, Fowke’s salary was $256,029, Shelsted’s salary was $180,035 and Edwards’ salary was $116,889.
The terminations constitute the latest in a series of steps Lichterman said she has undertaken in her 10 months as CAO to proceed with city council’s direction, which she described as, “to improve the way we deliver services, to work on our financial strategy and get our financial house in order, find efficiencies, and lead the key projects we have going on.”
Lichterman’s first several months at city hall were spent filling a number of key leadership position vacancies, which she said was largely completed by the end of 2025.
The next step, she said, was to look at ways to improve operations and service delivery.
“Sometimes in order to bring change to the organization you have to change personnel as well, and that’s really what this is,” she said. “It’s kind of the final piece to allow the organization to move forward, to continue along this journey to improve how we deliver services to the community.”
When it comes to the two deputy chiefs whose employment was terminated, she said Fire and Paramedic Services shifted a great deal with last year’s decision to hire separate chiefs for the two services, whereas recently retired Chief Joseph Nicholls was chief of both.
Although new deputy chiefs will be hired to replace Oshell and Roney, she said the job descriptions will change.
“With longtime employees, when you’re going through a period of change you work hard to make every effort to incorporate everyone into that change, and so at some point you decide that it’s not going to work with certain personnel in terms of adapting to the change, and that could be for any number of reasons,” she said.
Those employees who were let go this week “have contributed positively over the years to this workplace,” she said. “It’s unfortunate that they’ve been identified individually as they have, but I suppose that comes with working in the public sector.”
Lichterman said that she can relate, as she was similarly dismissed from her previous role as City of Mississauga CAO in 2024. In her case, a newly elected mayor (Carolyn Parrish) used strong mayor powers to end her employment.
It’s tough to have the termination of your employment be made public in this manner, she said, urging that the longtime former city managers be treated fairly.
These dismissals are in addition to the city shuttering the Office of the Auditor General effective Dec. 31, as decided by city council members in closed session last year and announced in a media release earlier this week.
It has been a time of significant change for City of Greater Sudbury management, starting with city council’s decision in late 2024 to dismiss then-CAO Ed Archer after eight years with the city.Lichterman was hired to fill the CAO position in early 2025, which was followed by a series of management changes as the city rejigged its manager positions.
Greater Sudbury Fire and Paramedic Services Chief Joseph Nicholls retired and was replaced by Rob Grimwood, formerly deputy chief of the City of Mississauga Fire and Emergency Services as Fire Services chief and longtime paramedic and city director Aaron Archibald as Paramedic Services chief.
Various other notable hires and promotions took place during the year, including Strategic Initiatives and Communications director Brigitte Pilon, Planning Services director Melissa Riou, Community Services general manager Ken Stuebing, city Finance executive director and CFO Margaret Karpenko, Community Infrastructure general manager Antti Vikko, Community Well-Being general manager Tyler Campbell and Planning and Growth general manager Kris Longston.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.