City plans job cuts
Reductions identified in Phase 3 of St. John’s program review
Phase 3 of the City of St. John’s program review is complete, with the finance committee promising more than $7 million in potential operating savings in 2017 and $7,060,141 in 2018.
Net operational savings from three phases of review are to total $13,263,649 for 2017 and $13,706,236 for 2018, the city said.
Phase 3 includes a reduction of 45 full-time equivalents jobs achieved through a combination of vacancies, attrition, reduced hours, layoffs and reduced staffing. In total, fulltime equivalent reductions for all three rounds is 71.73 jobs for 2017 and an additional 2.58 in 2018 for a total of 74.31.
“Our attention now turns to preparing for the 2017 budget,” said Coun. Jonathan Galgay, chairman of the city’s standing committee on finance and administration.
“With just over $13 million in identified efficiencies, our focus shifts to incorporating these savings into the operating budget and ultimately determining appropriate mill rates.”
Galgay says details on how the cuts will affect city jobs will become clearer soon.
“As we announced at the start of the process, all changes for unionized employees have been held until the end of the process in 2016, so that work will begin now,” Galgary said. “Within the next few weeks we will have a more complete picture as to how many individuals will be impacted by the review.”
Savings include a combination of job reductions as well as savings across such items as contractual services and materials and supplies.
Seventy-six programs (or functional, budget areas) were included in this phase of the review, including programs in the community services, service centre, parking, recreation, humane services, tourism, (events), the office of strategy and engagement, planning, development and engineering (inspection services and administration), public works (parks, city buildings, traffic, waste management and water and waste water), St. John’s Regional Fire Department and Metrobus and Paratransit.
Paratransit will now be handled by Metrobus.
“Although the majority of budgets related to waste management have been reviewed, waste collection itself is being done as part of the 2017 budget development process,” a city statement added.