Last year, Mark Brown, former interim Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) of the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD), received $286,139 in contract payments according to that entity’s 2023 annual report. That report was publicly presented at the SCRD’s Finance Committee meeting of April 18.
In response to questions from Coast Reporter, SCRD communications manager Aidan Buckley advised via email that Brown was contracted to serve as acting General Manager of Infrastructure services for much of 2023 (in the absence of Remko Rosenboom, who who held and remains in that position). As a contractor, Brown also served as the director of the region's emergency operations centre, activated in response to significant drought on the Sunshine Coast.
The SCRD sole-sourced contracting to Brown. Buckley indicated that “normally, a contract value of this nature would involve a procurement process. In this instance, due to the urgent need to have a dedicated resource in the acting General Manager of Infrastructure Services and EOC Director role, a decision was made to sole source the contract.
“The SCRD’s Chief Financial Officer brought this matter to the attention of the SCRD’s auditors as part of a 2023 interim audit last November. The auditors were satisfied that the issue had been rectified by the end of the year and that proper process will be followed in the future.”
The communications head did not provide details on what actions or issues needed to be rectified. He explained that “many” of the details regarding that contracting were discussed by elected officials in camera as they “related to SCRD personnel information and labour relations” and could not be publicly released.
Brown served as SCRD CAO on a temporary basis from March 2019, until the recruitment of Dean McKinley into that top-level staffer spot in mid-November of that year. The amount paid to Brown last year exceeded the salary of current CAO McKinley, which totalled $251,837 in 2023. The value of employment benefits provided to McKinley aren’t included in that number. In 2023, Rosenboom, who was on leave for the majority of the year, was paid $108,394 by the SCRD.
Buckley stated that the region has not contracted with Brown to date this year.
