Local Journalism Initiative
North Perth more open to reducing council than cutting services or staff
NORTH PERTH – During budget deliberations on Jan. 13, council discussed what to do about overwhelming staff hours and possible service cuts which could be made in the 2021 budget. In staff business plans originally presented to council in December detailed approximately 25,000 hours above the current staff capacity in year one of the strategic plan. “Also in review, year two and three aren’t going to be a whole lot better,” said CAO Kriss Snell. “So as a result of the… significant gap we did ask each department to go back and review their business plan to highlight any projects or areas that could be pushed off into 2022.” By deferring some projects they reduced the gap by 2,021 hours across the corporation. However, in doing so many departments deferred projects they were supporting or contributing to. “Those may be projects that were a high priority for the leading department so in a sense by one department deferring the contributing or supporting factor we’re shifting that workload back to the leading department,” he said. “In essence, we were only able to look at deferring a total of 1,617 hours.” Snell said they have looked at ways to close the gap in the 2021 budget. “We have allocated some additional staff in the 2021 budget,” said Snell. Staff reduced the possible list to eight areas where cuts could be made; closing the Atwood Library branch, close the Wallace Community Centre, cutting recreation programs and special events, cutting economic development staff, reducing bylaw enforcement, cuts to police services, close the Listowel Kinsmen Pool, close Elma Memorial Community Centre, and reducing the number of council members. “The criteria we used to identify the eight were services that we’re offering over the legislative requirement,” said Snell. For example, the municipality is required to have a police department but not some of them have contract enhancements such as the ability to serve North Perth residents who need reference checks. “That is not required but as many of council are aware we fought hard to keep that office in our municipality,” he said. A similar example is the library system. The municipality is required to have a library but it could look at reducing the number of branches. Other criteria were reducing things the municipality is not legislatively required to do. An example of this would be to have economic development. The third criteria involved looking at aging facilities that will need a lot of capital investment over the next several years. “A good example of that would be the Listowel pool,” said Snell. “In total, there is no one part of the eight that would save us a lot of money but it does add up to a little over $1.1 million.” After presenting the list of proposed service cuts he pointed out that these cuts would severely impact the services North Perth offers residents. “It is important to note that staff are not recommending any of these reductions,” said Snell. “Just because we think the impact is too great for the community but we brought this forward as the opportunities we think council could make some reduction in services if that’s the direction they wanted to go.” Coun. Terry Seiler asked how many councillors would council be reduced by and what the change to remuneration would be. “We just took the 2020 salaries and reduced that number by three… it’s reducing council from 10 members to seven members and again this isn’t something we’re recommending but it is something that we could look at,” said Snell. “The act says you have to have at least five so we did take a look at reducing it by three.” Seiler asked if there will come a time to look at a full-time position for the mayor. Snell said they had not looked at enhancements to positions, only reductions. “I’m one who is quite a bit in favour of dropping three members of council at the next election,” said Budget Chair Dave Johnston. “I think we are plenty big enough here.” Mayor Todd Kasenberg spoke about the need to avoid overwhelming staff. “As someone who is perhaps closest to the day-to-day of staff I can say in walking the halls and talking to our staff members that people are overloaded,” he said. “That’s not just a mayor opinion but it’s a professional position formed from a few years of working in several different organizations as a consultant and as an employee.” Kasenberg thinks it is important for North Perth citizens to hear this message from their mayor. “We have a very lean staff organization that is in significant jeopardy of not being able to complete the aspirational as well as the routine,” he said. “People in our community are often uncomfortable with the notion that the staff complement needs to be increased. They question us when we propose to do such a thing but I can assure from my years of walking the halls and interacting with the team that there is a problem.” Kasenberg believes that as the municipality moves forward decisions will have to be made about the kind of community North Perth wants to be. “When we look at this we have to say do we want to be a community… that eliminates recreation programs or eliminated economic development activities as a staff function?” he asked. “What would that mean for our quality of life, the quality of play and the experiences that our citizens and those who move here will have.” He suggested council continue to look at how it can prudently invest in the community. “I can say, again as mayor, having looked at the examples of previous councils, prudent investments have been made in the infrastructure of our community,” said Kasenberg. “We are extremely well set on a whole bunch of physical infrastructure foundations but now we’re at a stage where we’re growing rapidly, we have been for a few years and it’s urgent we consider how we move forward. I will say unequivocally that I don’t believe in making any of these cuts.” He said he thinks these cuts would be damaging to the fabric of the community and to the experience of citizens living here, “both long-time, six generations of blood-in-the-soil citizens, and citizens like myself who have only moved here four years ago or more recently.” “I care about this community and I care about the staff and I send my professional and mayoral opinion that we must do something because the staff is overloaded,” said Kasenberg. “If we don’t take some kind of action we will… accelerate the experience of short-term and potentially long-term disability leaves.” He also pointed out that the corporation of North Perth will experience accelerated turnover given the stress that is being experienced trying to manage a program that is well beyond the capabilities of the staff. “It’s not about professional capabilities, it’s about time,” said Kasenberg. “They do not have time to deal with the mandates that we as a council have ambitiously put before them and it’s time that we fix that.” “Well-spoken wise words there from someone who is a council member who is on the inside of the staff,” said Johnston. “I think that is a great read on the staff so thank you very much, Mayor Todd.” Coun. Allan Rothwell returned the conversation to the reduction of council members, asking whether it would have any effect on reducing costs before the next election. “That’s the problem with a lot of these proposals – Coun. Rothwell, you are right,” said Snell. “It would not be until the next election so that would be two years away and even if we look at things like our police contract. That would be an adjustment we’d have to make at the next contract renewal… that would be my one comment… if council wants to explore any one of these eight topics we’re going to have to do even more homework on how they unfold from here.” “When we’re looking for nickels and dimes that’s what you are going to get is nickels and dimes,” said Rothwell. He expanded on the comments made by Kasenberg about not wanting to make any of these reductions to services because expectations are that the municipality will support its citizens and businesses but he did say the reduction of council members could be looked into in the future. “I totally agree with Todd,” said Coun. Matt Richardson. “Some of the things we are looking at cutting here would be of significant detriment to the community.” He also agreed cuts to the council could be considered in the future. “That is probably going to need to be looked at some point because we currently have a roster of 10 whereas if you look at Toronto it was cut in half and they have 22,” said Richardson. “They have double the number of councillors we have and they have a couple of million people.” He acknowledged it will change the workload of individual councillors. “It will change the dynamics of council profoundly… I might raise the ire of some but it’s also going to bring back a look at the way we do elections and everything – whether things are at large because if you reduce the number of councillors, how do you do it?” asked Richardson He suggested waiting to discuss reducing the number of council until a report comes back from the committee which has been commissioned to look into municipal councils across Ontario. Colin Burrowes, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Listowel Banner
