Major Shake-Up at Williams Lake City Hall
Williams Lake, B.C. – Some major changes to start off the new year at Williams Lake City Hall.
Newly elected Mayor Walt Cobb says the City has eliminated eight positions in a bid to deal with a $2 million dollar budgetary shortfall.
“Yes, we have laid off eight people, or determined that eight positions were redundant. I don’t like that word but anyway that’s what we’ve done.
Those positions include:
Manager of Social Development
Manager of Information Technology
Manager of Economic Development
Communications Coordinator
Fire Hall receptionist
By-law enforcement officer, Engineering technologist
Planner, and Manager of Transportation and Buildings (this position was eliminated through attrition)
Cobb figures the layoffs will save the City $450,000 to $500,000 this year, over $1 million next year and another $4 million over the next five years,
He figures it won’t sacrifice the quality of city services.
“We have to make sure we can maintain our streets, roads, fire protection, and water/sewer. Those are our main services and we feel we can still do it with less staff.”
Cobb adds the changes were necessary to avoid a major tax hike down the road.
“If we didn’t do something about the $2 million shortfall, it could mean a 20% increase in taxation. We have some reserve accounts we can take out but it still left a horrendous overrun and we couldn’t have that kind of tax hike.”
Comments
So that’s how you get things done. 8 redundant positions in a small city like Williams Lake. I wonder how many there are in PG.
80 is my first guess.
Wow, a politician that actually makes smart cuts. Maybe PG mayor and council can learn something from this.
Let’s do the same at City Hall in Prince George. It is long overdue for a cleanup and streamlining. Are you listening, Lyn Hall?
Eliminate the secrecy at City Hall at the same time!! Reduce taxes!
Why are the taxpayers of PG being charged a tax for the 2015 winter games? I contacted the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George and they are NOT taxing their taxpayers for any part of the 2015 Winter Games. This City of PG tax related to paying for part of the 2015 Winter Games should be rescinded and any money already taxed should be refunded on the next tax notice for 2015.
Let’s have an editorial related to this matter!
About time someone got the ball rolling..
I sure hope that we can ‘trim some fat’ in our city. In the offices and outside workers. Produce results or here’s some walkin papers!! Sure can’t keep going the way it has.
This is certainly an attention grabbing headline, because it is such a rare occurrence! The usual government response to a budget shortfall is the automatic raising of taxes AND user fees! Cutting the fat is usually frowned upon. He certainly has courage!
I wonder if any of the redundant city employees don’t actually know they aren’t really needed? We could make a list of things for them to look for so they can come to that realization by themselves.
– If your daily safety assessment requires you to wear work gloves because you are a shovel/rake operating engineer and you have the same pair for more that a year with no holes in them then you may be redundant.
– If you are a middle manager and all you do is relay instructions from upper managers to lower managers you may be redundant.
– If you only use your office pen for Sudoku, crosswords, and scratching your ears you may be redundant.
– If all you do at your desk is keep tabs on and adjust your retirement investments and use retirement date calculators to determine when you should retire then you may be redundant.
– If you feel guilty every time you get your pay deposited into your account then you may be redundant.
– If you reduce your guilt (see above) by rationalizing that that is what keeps the economy going then you may be redundant.
– etc.
Hartley, I think in all instances you should replace “may be” with are.
One department they could look into is Bylaw Services. Go to them with a compliant and all you get is walls put up in front of you and comments such as “what do you think a judge would say”. I really don’t know what service they provide.
You have a new Mayor and council so give them the opportunity to do their stuff. check the seat of your pants and see if it look worn. Maybe you need new ones.
Cheers
Making cuts to redundant positions takes leadership and an ability to ignore the inevitable backlash. If you don’t think we have a lot of dead weight at City Hall, I would say you’re naïve.
I don’t think our Mayor and council has what it takes to make these kinds of decisions, but it’s still early in their term. So far, I see a lot of ‘status quo’.
There’s got to be at least 2 million in severance pay in those layoffs.
You’re better off paying severance than carrying dead weight for years and years.
Waaaaaaaaa is all I’ve heard about the winter games and it’s tax bs. It’s not going to hurt your pocket book anyway so whine about something else already.
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