City cost-cutting hurts own cause
Hiring freeze hobbles team tasked with finding savings
Efforts to cut costs have undermined the city’s ability to find savings, say city officials.
While work undertaken by the city’s zero-based reviews (ZBRs) has realized tens of millions of dollars in savings, the city’s hiring freeze has disrupted the process, states a report going to the city’s priorities and finance committee this week.
“Resource constraints have caused several projects to be delayed or placed on hold in 2017,” says the report prepared by city administration.
“These are the result of the loss of one previously approved position, as well as delays in hiring replacement staff.”
Fortunately, it says, the ZBRs have been granted an exemption from the hiring freeze and should be fully staffed this year.
But it’ll take some time to get back to full speed on the reviews, which attempt to streamline city operations to cut costs.
“The impacts of the 2017 staffing losses will continue to be felt for some time . . . work is underway to get the program back on track,” says the report.
It also says that last year, $15 million in savings were found through the ZBRs, helping bring the total amount of annual savings to between $57.3 million and $68.2 million since the process began in 2012.
While those numbers are something to celebrate, having the costcutting effort hobbled by austerity policies is “a little crazy,” said Coun. Shane Keating, who sits on the committee.
“If there’s a vacant position, we leave it vacant because of costcutting unless the positions are absolutely necessary,” he said.
“Now, they’re kind of behind . . . this should be filled.”
The cost of filling those positions are quickly recouped by the savings found in the ZBR process, said Keating.
“We’re actually seeing positive results, we should be doing them more and faster,” he said, adding the ZBRs are vital in holding the line on property tax hikes.
“They’re doing it more slowly and cautiously than they should be.”
While committee vice-chairman Sean Chu also hailed the merits of the ZBRs, he was reluctant to refer to a hiring freeze as austerity.
“That’s not austerity, we don’t have austerity — we should have cutbacks,” he said, before acknowledging unfilled jobs could be a form of austerity.
And he questioned exempting ZBRs from the hiring freeze.
“There’s always an exemption to the rule,” he said.
“If we need it for this item, what about the other items — everything’s important.”
But Chu said the ZBRs are a “good-news story, we should do more.”
Reforms realized in eight reviews representing 67 per cent of city services that have been completed since 2012 have also resulted in better, more effective services, improved public safety and reduced environmental effects, says the report.
Due to staffing issues, the completion of a review of the city’s recreation operations has been delayed, says the report, as have ZBRs of the land and supply business units.
“It is still expected that the target of reviewing 80 per cent of the city’s services by 2020 will be met,” it states.
The reviews find savings in both operational and capital budgets, it adds.