We know Frizzell never spent that money at Hair Club for Men .

The city added 50 employees? To do what exactly?

Posted on Thursday, June 25, 2015 @ 7:49 AM by Fate

The city added 50 employees? To do what exactly?

————-

Shovel’s don’t breast feed themselves.

Its interesting to note that the number of employee’s actually rose in 2013 over 2014.

How is it possible that we can have an increase in employee’s when we are supposedly in a cost cutting mode???

The above numbers indicate that City Administration don’t give a hoot what taxpayers think and basically do what they choose.

Time for the Mayor and Council to apply some pressure.

How was their an increase in the level of employees, when our population has been stagnant. Having nearly 1,000 on the payroll for a city of 75,000. Those numbers seem off to me.

Greek Economics 101.

The number of employees is a useless number to measure anything by especially when looked at over time. It is likely more of an indicator of staff turnover rate. Why? Because when a person starts off at the beginning of the year and ends up leaving he/she is recorded as an employee. The person hired as a replacement 6 months later towards the end of the year is also recorded as an employee.

Thus we have two employees for one position. On top of that, in that case, the position was only filled for half the year with others possibly doing overtime to accommodate the absence if it is a critical absence.

A truer measure is to show the FTE (full time equivalent). But that is not something one would expect from a pro-active Administration. Probably have to get and FOI request for that.

One would think that it would be in the interest of the City to provide an explanation whenever such releases are made that the general public reads too many things into.

Now, what is the explanation for Frizzell’s ridiculous spending? I thought that his extracurricular activities for FCM are paid for by that organization.

Greek public opinion 101.

Are these expenses including vehicle allowance,travel and meals? $31,395.00 for part time employment doesn’t merit vehicle,travel,and meal allowances. Land taxes and city services are becoming unaffordable and costs need to be cut. Between the two city bills on average is now costing approx. $310.00 per household monthly. Ask yourself is this affordable?

As I understand it, the City pays for Frizell’s travel to the FCM meeting and is then reimbursed for much of it by the Union of BC Municipalities. I don’t know whether the figure here reflects what was not reimbursed or whether perhaps it is what the City paid out initially from which the reimbursement has not been subtracted.

I smell your cooking billposer, I too am aware that Garth sits on the Federation of Canadian Municipalities board, which would involve significant travel back east on a regular basis.

Like you, I would also imagine that he represents the UBCM at these national meetings and has his travel costs and expenses reimbursed by the UBCM. This news article only presents us with the numbers, more detailed information on the nature of those expenses would be beneficial.

What is the total salary of the 50 new people the city hired and what are their positions?

The socialist people are pretty much out of control. And nope, most cant be fired. I never could figure out why council members are flying all the time. I think they consider themselves politicians. Most have little or no businesse experience.

“Most have little or no business experience.” Really? Frizzell, Koehler, McConachie and Scott have all operated businesses. Everitt and Krause aren’t in business but have experience running organizations of some size on a budget. Merrick is a consultant on agricultural business development. I don’t see that as a council ignorant of business.

Palopu says:”Its interesting to note that the number of employees actually rose in 2013 over 2014.”

The story says:”That’s a total of 916 employees for 2014.That is an increase over 2013….for a total of 865 employees.”

2013=865
2014=916

The PG Annual reports do not show the number of staff either as actual individuals or the FTE employees. Nor do they break out payroll costs.

What they do show on a comparative basis from year to year is departmental cost centres. Those same costs centres are also shown in the annual reports of other cities in BC.

So, the cost centres are shown below. Each is followed by the actual cost for 2014, followed by 2013, followed by the change in percentage from 2013 to 2014 as well as the actual $ change to show the impact of the change.

A City Manager, for instance, should be spending time to better control those cost centres which have the highest dollar value increase as well as percentage increase.

In addition to that, a best practices annual report ought to be reporting out on why the substantial increases, as well as decreases are what they are, such as changes in staffing, changes in pay rates due to new global agreements, one time retroactive pay due to bargaining unit agreements, rising energy costs, etc.

District Energy $1,098,000 $841,000 30.6% $257,000
Public Health and Welfare $644,000 $561,000 14.8% $83,000
Sanitation and Waste Removal $3,458,000 $3,066,000 12.8% $392,000
Protective Services $43,430,000 $38,609,000 12.5% $4,821,000
Transportation Services $29,614,000 $27,350,000 8.3% $2,264,000
Water and Sewer $15,093,000 $14,193,000 6.3% $900,000
Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services $22,287,000 $21,332,000 4.5% $955,000
General Government $18,247,000 $18,154,000 0.5% $93,000
Other Controlled Entities $6,849,000 $6,857,000 -0.1% -$8,000
Planning and Environmental Development $2,099,000 $2,281,000 -8.0% -$182,000

Total $142,819,000 $133,244,000 7.19% $9,575,000

So, my questions become:
1. Why an increase of 12.5% for almost $5million in police and fire services costs?
2. Why an increase of 8.3% for over $2million in Transportation Services?
3. Why an increase of 6.3 % for almost $1million in Water and Sewer?
4. Why a reduction of 8.0% in Planning and Environmental Development of close to $200 thousand?
It is interesting to note that the change of “General Government” which would encompass most of the staff occupying City Hall was only 0.5% for an additional cost of $93 thousand.

I suspect that when people are asking about the number of people employed, those are actually the ones they are thinking about, not the ones at the police station, the fire halls, and those employed in the public works areas.

Do not expect this Council to demand a better reporting out of such comparative measures in a more meaningful fashion to those who pay for the services they receive. It is just not in the interest of government at the municipal level unless forced to do so by senior governments.

As far as operating businesses goes. Anyone can operate a business. Not everyone can operate a successful business. It is not typical to find anyone who operates a successful business on City Council unless they are retired or semi-retired. Those individuals have their own business to operate to keep it successful.

Do a bit more homework on the background on the members on City Council when determining who actually operated a business which was their own or in partnership and was/is successful at doing so.