In a move some councillors thought was more ideological than cost cutting, city council passed a last-minute amendment that will save the average tax payer three dollars in this year’s approved budget.
Coun. Mark Bentz originally put forward an idea to eliminate five of the proposed 32 new full time equivalent staff positions in the 2012 budget at a savings of around $224,000 and put it into the city’s infrastructure renewal plan instead.
With the city facing a $15 million infrastructure deficit every year and people’s concern with growing staff in an uncertain economy, Bentz said the city would be better off addressing the gap while giving city manager Tim Commisso a year to see whether he could redeploy existing staff into the new positions rather than just hiring more people.
“I just can’t see hiring that many staff when we’re that far behind in infrastructure,” Bentz told his colleagues.
Even hiring 27 new people was too much Bentz said, but his proposal was still better than hiring all 32 positions. The five proposed to be cut were a part-time line painter and committee coordinator and full-time capital planning analyst, waterfront facilities coordinator, fire department training officer and Aboriginal liaison support positions.
“This is not a draconian measure at all,” he said.
Coun. Andrew Foulds said while he respected the idea and didn’t think the city was aggressive enough in closing the infrastructure gap, he worried what would happen if the positions weren’t filled. In particular, not hiring the Aboriginal support liaison and fire training officer could jeopardize strategic plans and compromise the health and safety of staff.
“Not to belittle the work we have done (but) we have a lot more work to do,” Foulds said of the city’s Aboriginal strategic plan.
And with the $224,000 being such a small amount compared to the infrastructure deficit, the money was better off being put into initiatives that would help the community and making it safer.
“I’d rather invest that in people,” Foulds said.
But Coun. Rebecca Johnson said she was getting frustrated by the city’s spending habits. The liaison position was for support, not for the Aborignial initiative itself. Firefighters have been able to train without a full-time officer up until now she added.
“We have to recognize that the city cannot be doing everything,” Johnson said. “That’s part of the community’s responsibility."
Bentz idea was eventually taken and approved but not as he intended. In a few rounds of re-votes and questions of clarification that seemed to confuse everyone in chambers, council voted to allow Commisso to find any five positions to cut in order to save the money and bring down the average new tax increase to 2.47 per cent rather than invest it in infrastructure.
Coun. Paul Pugh, who voted against the idea, said the measure didn’t really save that much money. He said the motion interfered with administration doing its job.
“Frankly I think it’s more ideological than practical,” he said. “It’s an attempt to say ‘look what we did’.”
