City payroll issues flagged for over a year

Former City of Brandon employees have been raising concerns over payroll discrepancies and staffing issues for more than a year, the Sun has learned.

Documents obtained by the Sun show that two former payroll employees warned city manager Dave Wardrop and director of human resources Lola Oyeladun in July 2025 about inadequacies within the department.

“It has become clear that the existing structure no longer adequately supports the scope or complexity of payroll operations within the City of Brandon,” a business proposal from former city employees said.

The former employees — who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions — said their warnings to management were not acted on and the problems they identified have gotten worse.

“We were worried that the situation that’s happening right now, would happen, (which is why) we spent a lot of time on said business plan,” one of the former employees said.

Payroll issues were made public earlier this month after four unions — the Canadian Union of Public Employees local 69, the Brandon Police Association, the Brandon Professional Firefighter Paramedics Association and the Amalgamated Transit Union local 1505 — told the Sun that members have been experiencing payroll, pension and wage deduction errors since union contracts were re-signed 18 months ago.

The payroll department is responsible for year-end taxes forms, union contract implementation, benefit administration, maternity and retirement management and more, but the two former employees claim union contracts were signed without payroll consultation.

“You signed a union document, a legal document that’s incorrect without advising us … So, there is time and money wasted for something that never should have been signed in the first place,” said a former employee who had worked with the city for more than 12 years before they resigned.

In April, an outgoing payroll employee again flagged issues in a letter sent to Wardrop and Oyeladun.

The letter claims “there were instances where decisions were made without payroll consultation that resulted in additional work, confusion, and potential risk.”

“For example, a calculation related to a senior employee’s paid leave was processed using hours that did not align with the city’s standard workday calculation, which required review and correction,” the letter said.

The two employees ultimately left their positions in payroll because of a “toxic” work environment where they couldn’t do their jobs without being “criticized and micromanaged” by management, they said.

A third former employee, who left over management concerns in October 2025, said she remembers negativity within the HR department where some employees would hold meetings and “trash talk the payroll department” and other HR employees.

“I couldn’t even tell you the amount of trash talk about the payroll department,” she said.

Email correspondence shows all city councillors and the mayor were informed by a former employee about the “operational risk” within the payroll department on March 25, 2026.

One councillor — Coun. Bruce Leubke (Ward 6) — responded to the email and acknowledged the former employees’ proposal, writing that he “brought it up with our city manager earlier this week.”

From March to May, the four unions continued to experience pay stub issues, and in mid-May they wrote a joint letter formally requesting a third-party audit of the payroll and HR department.

Oyeladun, writing to the union presidents on Aug. 18 “on behalf of the mayor, council and the city manager,” said the city “is actively undertaking both external and internal review steps to assess the concerns identified.”

“The city is also consolidating information from these external organizations with internally completed corrective actions and process improvements,” the letter said.

On Sept. 15, Oyeladun said the city “has now received the independent payroll operations report and is reviewing its finding,” but claimed a second report that was requested is still ongoing.

In an interview on Thursday, Wardrop said the city is currently conducting a “process improvement review” with information from third parties.

Wardrop said the process began “after we had a request for the review by the unions.”

In response to the concerns raised by former employees in July 2025, he said, “We looked to provide additional support through third-party contractors and help staff with the processing of payroll.”

He added that third-party support wasn’t brought in at that time.

“I’m not prepared to discuss HR issues publicly,” Wardrop said in response to a question about the March email warning of “operational risk” within the department.

Mayor Jeff Fawcett said in an interview on Thursday that he brought the concerns to the city manager “as soon as I had got the email,” without specifying which email.

“We immediately upon hearing about them, we (told) staff, ‘Could you look into this and can you get back to us on this?’ and they’ve been working on it since then,” Fawcett said.

When asked about the concerns being repeated in March and May, Fawcett said he was “trying to be the mayor and … was trying to meet with federal and provincial governments on bigger projects,” and was “caught up in doing other things.”

“I’ve asked (management) to deal with it, and they’re dealing with it,” he said. “People are getting their paycheques. There’s little errors here and there, and they’re fixing them.”

Wardrop said staff is still “waiting for some final information from a third party and are hoping to finalize the review in the foreseeable future.”

Wardrop would not provide a timeline.

» rgerrard@brandonsun.com