Saturday Morning Musings- Municipal Operational Review

Article & Image © Stephen Vance, 2009

As has been noted by several people, there has been a lack of articles posted on this site over the past week. This is in part because I have been waiting for a couple of important municipal reports to be released that need to be written about. I have also had a very busy work week, so I haven't had much time for writing.

Someone else who has had an extremely busy several weeks is Meaford CAO Frank Miele. In addition to preparing his 3rd Quarter Report that outlines the status of the 2009 municipal budget, Miele has also been sifting through the mountain of recommendations put forward by the Citizen's Task Force (CTF), and the independent consultant after the completion of the long awaited "Municipal Operational Review".

As most of you will recall, there have been some vocal residents and politicians who have insisted that Meaford has a bloated roster of municipal employees, and given the current and ongoing financial difficulties being experienced in Meaford, the municipality must slash staff in order to lower expenditures.

It was acknowledged that such views though prevalent, were somewhat anecdotal and were not supported with any hard data, so Meaford Council directed the CAO to undertake a comprehensive review of municipal services, and the staffing in place to support those services. In an effort to ensure transparency and objectivity, an independent consultant was hired, and a citizen's task force was formed to conduct the audit.

During the process every department within the municipality was evaluated, and every member of the municipal staff from the front line workers to the senior management team were interviewed.

The result of this extensive look into the workings of the municipality was two reports submitted to the CAO- one from the Citizen Task Force, and one from the consultant. The CAO has prepared his own report, and this report is included in the agenda package for the November 9th council meeting.

The 23 page report which begins on page 98 of the meeting agenda package, includes 128 recommendations from the CAO. The recommendations are in the form of a work plan that includes target completion dates, associated costs if any, and functional responsibility for each recommendation.

I am already bracing for the onslaught of criticism from those that were confident that the review process would result in a finding that there were far too many staff members, and recommendations for staff reductions which would save hundreds of thousands of dollars.

There will be some that will be quick to point out that aside from the recommendation to eliminate the position of General Manager of Meaford Hall upon the expiration of the contract for that position next year, there are no proposed job cuts. In fact, there are expressed needs for additional staff.

The fact is that both the committee that was composed of every day Meaford residents, and the independent consultant, after conducting their extensive reviews determined that given the services currently provided by the Municipality of Meaford, the corporation is adequately staffed. In some areas in fact, it was determined that the municipality is under-staffed.

As in any organization, there are many areas that can be improved, and there are many efficiencies to be found, but if you are looking for positions to cut, they just aren't there.

Does this mean that there is absolutely no way that staff could be cut to save costs?

There certainly are. And to anyone who feels compelled to put forward an argument that the Municipality of Meaford still must cut staff, there will be one very important component that must be included in such an argument:

Which services would you like to see cut?

Staff can certainly be reduced, but there is no way of reducing municipal staff without cutting services, because the current staff is already stretched pretty much as thin as they can be.

As an example, if you take a look at winter snow plowing for the 544 square kilometre area that Meaford covers, we have 17 plow routes, 17 trucks, and 17 drivers. That is pretty tight staffing if you ask me.

If you want to reduce staff in the Operations Department, which incidentally is the largest department in the entire municipality, you would need to combine plow routes which would result in reduced service as it would take the plows longer to clear the municipal roads of snow. This raises safety concerns, and would no doubt frustrate already frustrated taxpayers. Not to mention, the actual cost savings would be pretty insignificant.

Some might feel that perhaps there is some excess to be found in the luxury services such as the arena, the pool, and the harbour. The fact is that those three facilities operate on less than 9 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) employees. Think about that. The arena, the pool, and the harbour are staffed by the equivalent of 9 full time people. There are probably more people working at the local Dairy Queen.

The library is staffed with roughly 5.5 FTE's, the museum with less than 2, the planning department 5, and Meaford Hall has 6.71 FTE's (5.71 after the General Manager position is eliminated).

Our entire municipality operates with the equivalent of less than 80 employees.

Less than 80 full time equivalent staffers to plow and maintain our roads, run our facilities, maintain our parks, supply our homes with water, operate the library, take care of the finances, and carry out a multitude of other tasks that quite frankly need to get done in order to keep our town running.

I'm amazed that it all gets done with that few.

Still, I understand the desire to fix all of the municipal financial problems by cutting staff, so I have a proposal:

We can save the cost of roughly 24 full time positions if we get rid of all of the community services. Let's shut down the library, Meaford Hall, the museum, the arena, the pool and the harbour.

Eliminating those positions should free up around $800,000 per year in salaries.

It would also provide us with some really cool empty buildings for us to store the huge piles of money that we are about to save.

Once this is complete we will be in a position to eliminate the five positions in the planning department since nobody will want to build or develop here after we obliterate every bit of community and cultural activity in the town.

Eliminating the planning department should save at least another $200,000.

Now that we have no athletic or cultural services to worry about, and we don't need to be paying people to ensure that development happens properly, there would be really nothing worth protecting or saving in Meaford so we could also get rid of the staff at the fire department.

Now with the elimination of a total of 34 full time equivalent staffers, we would have our municipal workforce reduced to slightly more than 40 full time employees.

That should save just about enough to cover the 2008 deficit and have a little left over to provide every household with a really big hose in case of an unexpected house fire.

Then all we'd be left with is the need to come up with a crafty plan to cover off the outstanding 2007 deficit.

Suggestions anyone?

Anyway, coffee is done, I must be off.

Have a great weekend everyone!

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