Fire Chief Top Spender In City Senior Leadership Expense Report

A collage of photos from the city fire department’s 125th anniversary gala, a catered affair with MC and bands held at Co-op place last year. The cost of the event didn’t appear to be included in the senior leadership expenses report outside of top city bureaucrats charging the municipality for tickets to the gala. (Photo Medicine Hat Fire Department)

The city’s first public disclosure of senior leadership expenses was presented at Wednesday’s Audit Committee meeting with the fire chief the top spending bureaucrat when it comes to discretionary spending.

At more than $19,000, Fire Chief Chad Eakins topped the list of 21 senior leaders, outpacing by a fair margin all others with the exception of the city manager who recorded only a few hundred dollars less.

Eakins’ expenses included a single purchase of nearly $4,000 in unspecified gifts to the department, nearly $3,500 in gifts from South Country Co-op for staff along with a $2,200 annual retirement meal.

The expenses come as the fire department finished 2025 nearly $950,000 over it’s $19 million budget, more than 90 per cent of which goes to wages.

The budgeted shortfall in the department was due to, “higher than budgeted wages resulting from unmet vacancy adjustment and accrual of wages in preparation for future retroactive payouts following collective bargaining,” according to financial documents also presented to the audit committee on Wednesday.

The city firefighters have been without a contract since the end of 2022 and currently have 115 employees, 80 of which work on the frontline.

Chief Eakins’ expenses were singled out by committee chair Coun. Cheryl Phaff during Wednesday’s meeting.

“I do believe there is some room for improvement,” Phaff told the Owl in response to questions about Eakins’ expenses.

MHFD Chief Chad Eakins

She added that goes for the city as a whole as this council prepares for thorough discussions on spending leading into the debate on the 2026-27 budget and expects the newly established budget committee will be the venue for those talks.

“One of the goals of (the committee) will be to  find some savings because I do believe that we are spending a lot of money in the city,” said Phaff. “Fire and police are part of our budget and we will be looking at those as well as the municipal portion of it to try to find some savings. So, yeah, I think there will be some belt tightening coming up.”

The senior leadership expense report includes spending on training, travel, professional membership dues and employee recognition.

It also came with a warning from Jilian Campbell who was the city’s last CFO but who only lasted a few months in the job.

During a July 2025 presentation in response to the previous council’s motion three months earlier to develop the report, Campbell said such expense disclosures could, and likely  would lead to mis-information and dis-information, suggesting internal auditing would suffice.

She warned councillors there’s no context provided for the spending provided in the report.

Campbell shared a personal example of how spending could be taken out of context, referencing a purchase she made to help staff deal with a particularly tough situation.

“I purchased two dozen cookies for staff in customer care and billing,” Campbell told councillors at the time. “They were going through an extremely tough time explaining to people their property taxes were late and they’d have to incur a penalty.”

She explained such an act can help with staff retention and avoid the costs associated with retraining new employees.

According to the senior expense report, Campbell spent $69.60 on that purchase from local downtown business Kookie Bites.

The report noted the city manager recorded $18,956 in purchases. The directors of economic development, environmental utilities community development, finance all reported spending between $10,000 and  $11,000. The remaining senior staff expenses were under $10,000.

The cumulative total in the report was a little more than $168,000.

The report does not included the police chief’s expenses.