City council sat Monday for the first of three nights of budget deliberations, parsing the 2018 draft line by line and discussing what should be kept and what should be cut.
City council dug into the 2018 budget draft Monday evening. Deliberations continue through Wednesday.
Dec. 4, 2017
Debate over adding new city staff featured prominently, with some councillors wanting to leave vacancies unfilled and cancel new hires, with others wanting to bring on new staff they believe are badly needed.
“The bottom line is we just grow year after year and we have to find a way to restrain that,” said Coun. Adrian Bell, arguing against adding new employees to the city's payroll.
Coun. Shauna Morgan pushed back.
“I don’t see that we have a bloated bureaucracy, and I think that we need to look at each proposed position on its own merit,” she said.
“I disagree with the approach of saying that we just can’t afford any staff positions, anywhere, for any reason, period.”
The city currently has 222.7 full-time equivalent positions.
Administration is proposing to add 3.61 full-time equivalents to the municipal civil service, bringing the total number of full-time equivalents to 226.31.
Senior administrative officer Sheila Bassi-Kellett said the new positions would include a lifeguard at the Ruth Inch Memorial Pool, a radio communications technologist, and a two-year-term “revenue specialist” who would “aggressively and proactively” seek out grants and alternative streams of funding for city projects.
The new lifeguard would come at a cost of $82,000 and the radio communications technologist would cost $135,800. Administration has budgeted $115,000 for the revenue specialist.
“For the life of me, I can't understand why that work isn't being done in Economic Development,” Coun. Niels Konge said of the proposed revenue specialist.
Bassi-Kellett said the Policy, Communications and Economic Development department is currently “fully maxed out.”
Konge said he would struggle to support any new hires.
Hiring a revenue specialist was Mayor Mark Heyck's idea.
The thinking is that such a specialist will bring in much more money than he or she costs.
Heyck said the position is time sensitive, because there are pools of funding open to Yellowknife in the next two years that may not be there after the next federal election, in October, 2019.
Bassi-Kellett said that based on discussions with the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency and the government of Northwest Territories, the city estimates, roughly, that the specialist could bring in $200,000 to $300,000 in new revenue.
Morgan said she knows, based on her years writing funding proposals for non-profits, that applying for grants is an art.
“Writing a good proposal is essential to bringing those dollars in,” she said, adding that someone who can do it efficiently, and has a thorough understanding of the funding pots that are out there, will mean a net gain for the city.
In Bell's view, the population of Yellowknife is not growing quickly enough to justify hiring more than three new full-time equivalent city staff.
He would like council, in the future, to consider axing city jobs that may be “obsolete.”
Bell sees the value in a revenue specialist, but did not support hiring a new lifeguard or radio technologist.
Sharolynn Woodward, Yellowknife's director of corporate services, said the voice radio system used by the city's first responders is “an extremely critical piece of our infrastructure,” and that “our first responders' lives literally depend on it.”
The technical support center for that radio system is based in New Zealand. Woodward recommends bringing that support in-house.
She said the radio technologist could train first responders on the existing system, and maintain it as it ages. His or her expertise could also apply to the city's traffic lights system, she said.
Administration would also like to increase hours for casual community services staff and shave off some hours in Public Works and Corporate Services.
The city budgeted $22.46 million for wages and benefits in 2017, and proposes increasing that amount by about $1.13 million in 2018 to around $23.59 million.
Bassi-Kellett said this increase reflects the proposed hires, and possible increases in collective bargaining agreements.
Bell asked if there are currently any “chronic vacancies that might be positions that aren't needed.”
Bassi-Kellett said the city has experienced significant turnover recently, resulting in a number of vacancies, but that she didn't see the advantage to leaving any of them unfilled.
Lower staffing levels have slowed down city business, she said.
“We do find that every department within the city is fully-loaded with a number of projects,” said Bassi-Kellett.
She said leaving vacant or cutting any positions “isn't something that I would recommend.”
After a certified assessment roll showed higher than anticipated assessment growth, and a $256,000 grant from Health Canada and the GNWT, city administration whittled down its proposed property tax hike from 5.64 per cent to 4.32 per cent.
City council will adopt the final version of the budget on Dec. 11.