After being asked to examine ways to reduce overtime spending in the water and sewer department two weeks ago, City of North Bay staff reported to City Council that none of the alternate scheduling options they scrutinized would result in significant savings, if any. PHOTO BY LIAM BERTI
If the City of North Bay is going to cut down their overtime spending in the water and sewer department, it apparently won't be through staff scheduling.
Just two weeks after the city was asked to reevaluate overtime staff compensation in that area, City Council was told that there is very little possibility of finding efficiencies.
With this year’s projected overtime figures expected to come in at $383,000, councillors Mike Anthony and Daryl Vaillancourt wanted to see what could be done to address what they thought was an excessive overtime pay in that department.
Their answer came in a report during Monday night’s committee meeting of council, where David Euler, the city’s managing director of engineering, environmental and works, reviewed two options put forward.
The first option included staggered shifts with one day crew and one night crew, while the second option looked at extending staff shifts to 10 hours.
But even when looking at the optimal potential savings of $53,630 with the former, Euler told council that the changes just wouldn’t make sense for them.
“We’ve looked at this fairly carefully and we don’t think that implementing a second shift, based on the volume of work we do and the number of crews we use to deal with these issues, would be prudent,” Euler explained.
Last year, water and sewer overtime accounted for $398,000, up slightly from the year before. In years previous to that though, the trend was going down for several years since the department spent $552,553 on overtime in 2010.
“We are constantly looking at ways to reduce overtime; we are relentless about that,” said Euler. “We are moving in the right direction.”
In 2014, day shift extensions made up $53,600 of the overtime, facilities overtime made up $46,600, overtime paid for by third parties was $34,000, and overtime for work on weekends, after midnight, time in lieu of lunch breaks, training and emergencies totalled $263,800.
The current scheduling configuration consists of two construction crews that work from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Last year, there were 48 excavations that extended beyond the end of that shift, resulting in 225.5 hours of crew overtime.
Of those hours, 184 came during the summer months when the average crew rate is $230 per hour, while 41.5 were in the winter when the use of an additional backhoe operator increased that rate to $268.32 per hour.
But even if separate day and night shifts were implemented, the savings on those figures would likely be nullified.
Euler said due to shift premiums, shift overlap, overtime costs after the second shift, assigning meaningful work after hours and the efficiency of a night crew would likely offset the $53,630. The report even goes as far as saying that option would likely result in more overtime.
The second option they examined was implementing 10-hour shifts, which Euler said would only save $2,070 and would be eliminated by shift premium requirements under the workers’ collective agreement.
Even with the general downward trend in overtime spending though, Coun. Derek Shogren expressed concern for the figure, considering the overall water and sewer budget is already in the neighbourhood of $20 million.
Shogren asked if the department had set targets for this year’s overtime, to which Euler said that they had not.
“I fully agree that the budget is a lot of money, but we do a tremendous amount of work,” said Euler. “Unfortunately there are some situations that we are legislated to do and others where we need to have faith in our supervisors and our people that are on the front line to make the right decisions about overtime.”
Despite the prompt work from city staff, Anthony seemed to be dissatisfied with the report after the discussion Monday night and still did not get an answer about staggering the shifts the way he had proposed two weeks ago.
“I find it hard to believe that ‘this is as good as it gets,’” Anthony said after the meeting. “I still feel that there might be some options for flexibility to look at, but I may be wrong.
“I think we have to look at innovative ways to do things differently,” he added.
Anthony asked what solutions would be put forward if instead of council basically asking city staff for permission, they simply gave them the parameters to work with and forced them to find creative ways to address the problem.
Ultimately the report was accepted though and now City Council is expected to vote on the proposed water and sewer budget during next week's meeting.
