“Furthermore, why not put a meaningful review process in place that, besides councillors, also includes municipal workers, as well as members of the public.”

Because these things cost money and have no value.

Its funny how during negotiations labour wants to take as much from the taxpayer as possible but when someone comes along and starts making tough decisions they want “to be involved with planning and decision making.”

I dont think you can have it both ways. Taxpayers see Government labour as the enemy. Labour doesnt care about the taxpayer, they care about how much they make in wages and benefits.

But now the shoe is on the other foot. I think its sad when someone looses their job however its business. Just like when you strike to get more from us. We have the right to turn around and take some back from you.

Unions made this an adversarial process. Now they can live with what they have created.

Labour is the taxpayer. One party can not make anything an adversarial process. It takes two to tango.

This are the first Victims so you can pay for your Mega Projects, like the one (We are Winter) the Money got to come from somewhere and the Workers pay again.

I think there should be a lot more lay offs or rightly put FIRING of more of these over paid useless workers. They do nothing. I have seen them 5 or 6 of em at a job site 2 actually working the rest standing there. And if could be the one firing them I would most certainly post the positions and the neames of the ones I had the privilidge to fire. I think nothing has happened. Just smoke and mirrors. If (underlined) it were true that they did fire a just a few of them then let’s hear who and what it is. The road re-hab ius just a joke and we pay these usekess workers to stand there and drive around all day and do nothing. I would fire most of them if I were running the show and replace them with people at much lower cost to the tax payer. They could move to Alberta or go work in toronto or something whocares what they do. Truth is it is costing US

You are a class act mattyc…pure class.

I wonder if any of these 9 people po’d green when she was a councillor. It seems odd that it happened so fast and their keys were actually taken from them and they were escorted from the building. What were they afraid of, that they were going to steal some pens and pencils, maybe a stapler or two? I would be interested in knowing exactly which positions were canned and in which departments.

Ok so you tell me and every one else how you think that paying them 20 to 30 dollar per hour is good value for the taxpayers of this town. They should ALL be fired in my opinion. If I were in charge that would happen. And the people could have a break for once in the tax bill. There is no way that WE should be paying that kind of money for what we get. There are hundreds of people that could and would ladly do that work for half the price these ones now get. Come on tell us NOW how it can be justified paying them that much money? I say pay them 15 an hour and NO benifits.

“Thus, it seemed extremely rushed and ill-considered, when Prince George Mayor and Council (with the exception of Councillor Brian Skakun) decided on a Monday night “

Your lack of attention to detail is showing. Lyn Hall was not in the chamber that afternoon. He did not vote. However, Frank Everett was there.
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“It was only two months ago that, during the November municipal election campaign, Mayor Green claimed layoffs at the city were not being “considered”.”

And this means what? Things change. She is now mayor and the decisions she has to make are a bit tougher to make. It simply reconfirms that most politicians do not expand on negative possibilities during election time. I would think that an individual that is reasonable would have foreseen at least the possibilities of layoffs.

This is something new for this City, both for the top administrators as well as Council. It would not surprise me if administrators also did not have enough information at election time to understand the true impact of varying levels of holding back tax increases.

Kinda sound similar to the HST situation to me. I think it shows a weakness in the political systems of the way we change the guard. There is a month or so when the real world stops for politicians and they go into this fantasy world of “evertyhing will be good if you just elect me”.

Luckily it is just a short time and also luckily, the election date will be shifted due to it happening at the critical time of the budgeting process. I am not sure why it took so long to come to that realization.

but ….. Peter did not say that everyone had their keys taken from them.

There are many reasons why keys are taken from people when the get “fired”. Not everyone got “fired”. I believe all those who occupied union positions are in situations of being able to bump others if they wish to. So the whole process for them is not over yet and could continue for several weeks. I also believe some of those are completing the work which was in progress rather than stopping it dead while the rearrangements are in process.

I also believe that some in management were given other positions that were vacant and had not been cut.

There are relatively standard protocols these days of how the HR managers do these things to avoid some worst case scenarios which might occur and have occurred. The worst of them have hit the newspaper. One never knows how people will react under extreme circumstances.

Even being “escorted” off has different purposes for different circumstances.

In my opinion, the public communications around this have not been handled very well. However, these days when privacy legislation is in place, the easy route of communicating such matters has been removed, so I think we have to keep that in mind. Also, they do not do this every day.

Finally, it seems that the message they got from the electorate is that the level of tax increase is no tolerable. So, kinda between a rock and a hard place, would you not say?

Peter wrote:

“The City has many fixed assets, equipment and operations in place and a variety of projects on the go, along with all sorts of valuable tracts of property. In addition, the mayor and councillors voted themselves a substantive salary increase recently. Why wasn’t the time taken to closely scrutinize all of this for cost-cutting, or, in the case of property, selling off?”

1.fixed assets and property cannot be sold immediately … tax levels have to be set immediately. I know, a bit hard to comprehend sometimes.

2.The statement implies that the mayor is also getting a “substantial” raise. I believe the recommendation was that the salary is comparative with other communities and the stipend or salary for Councillors was considerably less than those in other communities. I do not know the exact figure, but I think the increase was something like 30% which amounts to something like $10,000 per Councillor. That adds up to $80,000. Not “substantial” in my mind. Would save one position. However, it does have a lot of the right, positive public perception attached to it. Don’t know whether it was considered.

3.Why wasn’t the time taken to look into matters more than they did? I think it is simply a matter of having to make a decision in order to get the budget done on time. Putting budgets together can be difficult and time consuming if one has to present scenarios which are truly alternates rather than just quickly put together variations on a theme. Meaningful alternatives can be explored in honest service reviews such as I hope we will have done. It is years overdue.

“They attack core services by eliminating 28 jobs”

How do you classify “core” services?

Do you have knowledge of the 28 positions cut and how they relate to “core” services”.

Please provide that information before making comments such as that. Takes a lot of credibility away from the opinion piece.

But then, I forget that opinion pieces do not need credibility, just opinions. ;-)

“And who better than members of the public to give opinions on what the municipality’s priorities should be, especially when we have had successive Councils that seem to have lost their way?”

Yyou are describing the “services” review; and I hope it will be a full services review rather than just core services.

In the most strict sense, I define those as the services required by law; the next level would be those which are common practice as provided by peer communities; the final level would be the nice to have but not necessary, but provided in those communities that use “best” practices.

From what I have seen of the suggested scope of the RFP for the review, that will all be addressed and the “interviews” will be had with the public as well as staff and information from peer communities will be brought in to determine the recommended standards of service for this community as well as an evaluation of how well we are doing with that and how we might move closer to where we should be in relation to the standard we expect whether that would mean more service or less service on a program by program area.

when someone comes along and starts making tough decisions they want “to be involved with planning and decision making.”
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This was not a tough desicion it. It was an idea to save the butt of the CEO and the 18 directors at City Hall.

I guess you didnt even read Peters post and what it means to the management of our city

A great Post Peter. It is a formula for getting everyone involved for a better managemnt of an operation.

But I do have to ask if the layoffs were the idea of council or just another airy fairy idea of management.
Cheers

Gus your off again in fairy land with not much thougth to the question at hand.
Cheers

As are you these days.

“But I do have to ask if the layoffs were the idea of council or just another airy fairy idea of management”

Why bother? Your mind is already prejudiced as is Peter’s. Do some reading. Irt is all there for those who take the time and show the interst rather than spouting off without information.

http://humanresources.about.com/od/howtofireanemployee/tp/top_ten_donts.htm

That is a link to common standard or even best practices standard of practice these days in the HR field when an employee is let go.

1. Don’t Allow the Employee to Leave With Company Property in His Possession

If possible, ask the employee to hand over their key, door pass, badge, cell phone, laptop, and any other company-owned equipment or supplies during the termination meeting. Accompany the employee, during lunch or a break, if possible, to their work area to collect the rest of the company-owned items before you escort the employee to his car. If, as an example, the laptop is at the employee’s home (unlikely), make solid arrangements as to when you expect it back.

2. Don’t Allow the Former Employee to Access His Work Area or Coworkers

Many employees become visibly upset when they are fired. Okay, they cry. For their dignity and to not upset your other employees, make arrangements with the employee to come in after work or on a weekend to pick up their personal possessions. This allows you to extract company documents and material, such as customer files, and so forth, and allows the employee privacy when they pick up their possessions. If the employee insists on picking up all possessions immediately, wait until lunch or a break, if possible, and always accompany the employee to her work area. You want to minimize the contact the employee has with your other employees at the work site.

3. Don’t Allow the Employee to Access Information Systems

Terminate the employee’s access to your electronic systems such as email, the company wiki, Intranet, customer contact forums, and so forth, during the employment termination meeting, or slightly before. You will need to partner with your IT staff to make certain loss of access occurs. I’ve heard many funny, but also sad stories, about employees sending good-bye notes that started with, “I’m outta here, you suckers…” And, I am also aware of employees sabotaging computer systems in a moment of anguish following termination. Work with IT staff to see what company information may have been stolen during the weeks preceding a quit or termination. If the employee wants to send a good-bye note, post her appropriate note for her to all staff.
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That is the real world situation these days. I don’t like it. But to do anything less than that, especially for a public body, would be to not be diligent. The hard facts of life.

So, a better story would be “what is the mood at City Hall like these days?” Are more people expecting the rest of the bad news to drop as the budget gets scrutinized? What is the mood like in the community with those who are expecting new grants or ongoing grants? This might end up the same as the province cuttiing back on gaming grants a couple of years ago whcih sent shockwaves through organizations that had been receiving them on a steady basis. Now all or many have been re-instituted and some are wondering what to do with the “new” money.

Well Gus some of us dont spend our days on google trying to impress others with our knowledge. We bave our own ideas that are impotant to us and wether you like them or not is irrelivent.

So to give your fairy tales some credit you brand us as being “prejudiced”.

You are tbe only one whos’s posts go forever with a lot od poppycock that most of us dont even read they are so boring.
Cheers

This is an interesting and very modern part of the layoff/firing process. From the previous link:

Final Thoughts About How to Fire an Employee

Firing an employee is not your most sought after experience. But, you can make the experience more palatable by using an effective, supportive approach. The actions you take really do matter to the employee who is being fired and to the coworkers who will learn – quickly – that the employee is gone.

In this day of social media and electronic communication, your entire workforce may know within a half hour – or sooner. And, because you keep employee matters confidential, the employee tells any story that makes them look good.

You will be unfriended, so if you wonder how the former employee positions the termination, check quickly. Expect a period of time during which successful employees look to you for reassurance about their own jobs.
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I think today’s employers have not adjusted their best practices yet to consider the social media and news blogs in their tactics surounding the release of information at the time of notifying the public about public organization layoff/firings.

The handy excuse of “Mr. Smith was one of our best staff and will be missed as a result of his leaving for personal reasons” is not accessible at such time.

“We bave our own ideas that are impotant to us and wether you like them or not is irrelivent.”

Hey … sounds like my way of thinking. You must have picked that up on google. ;-)

There were days when those doing literature searches prior to making some “informed decisions”, had to go to libraries such as Universities, Colleges, Museums. etc. and spend days and weeks making notes to retain some of the more important and detailed information.

I do not recall anyone rebuking them for the work that they did. Some may have had opposite opinions, which is fair enough.

So, in my world of doing “literature” searches for the work that I do prior to determining where the gaps in information are so that they can be filled by doing some “original” work to add to the public body of knowledge , having a tool such as the internet provides is simply amazing. With some new skills to hone the ability of quick searches and old skills of skimming the written words for the meat on the skeleton, what took days can be done in a few minutes. It now takes more time to write summaries than to do the searches.

But hey, why am I telling you this since you really do not care.

So, as with everything that is new, there are a few luddites who still cannot put all this together. Sorry, I am not going to spend time being concerned about that.

Over and out.

The fairy land is the one where if you are employed by any level of government you think you are immune to any form of job cuts regardless of economic realities in the real world. Time to wake up and smell the coffee, brothers and sisters.

The only thing I did find disturbing was the statement by Derek Bates that he was not sure how the job cuts would affect core services….you would think that would be one of the focal points in the discussion leading up to the layoffs.

….. with the lawns covered in snow, retired 02 can’t chase the kids off it so has to find something else to grumble about

Hey, think positive. Even retired 02 can track them in the snow now.

The City is on the right track when they got rid of 28 jobs, however did they really get rid of that many.

We need to know how long were the 19 vacant positions *vacant* In the case of the Communications Manager they hired, it seems to me that the job was vacant for almost a year. They then hired him from the Airport Authority, after doing some smoke and mirror manipulations at City Hall. This individual has now moved on to the Winter Games.

We had a similiar situation a few years ago, when the City returned 3 RCMP from the Community Policing to General Duties, to add to the on the ground numbers, and they then hired 3 civilians to fill these positions. So it now appears that they will downgrade the Community Policing by one person.

Who knows what else is going on at City Hall. It is a pretty good guess that this City of 70,000 people is probably over staffed (Union and otherwise) by about 20%, so a cut of 10% would not be out of order. The core reveiw should be able to give us all the answers we need, in regards to downsizing staff, and cutting costs in various departments.

Every business, industry, etc in the Prince George area over the last 15/20 years have had some pretty severe cutbacks. Mills have shut down, BC Rail absorbed into CN Rail with huge cuts. Schools closed, teachers jobs cut, however through it all the City seems to have been overlooked.

The City of Prince George is totally out of control when it comes to wasting money. They are so bad, that when you start to look at it closely it makes you gag.

We need not spend any sympathy on cutting costs at City Hall. In fact we should celebrate. Those people who lose their jobs will either have their pensions bridged, or get some severence, or go on EI for a year at 75% of thier salaries. Most of them will get jobs elsewhere and carry on. Thats about it.

The real crime, is for us taxpayers to keep people on the payroll who are not making a realistic contribution. It is not fair that we should pay extra taxes so a City employee can have a job. This line of thinking doesnt work in the private sector, and certainly shouldnt work in the public sector.

Next on the list should be the BC Government. You could knock off 20% of those people and never know they were missing.