North Bay councillor Mike Anthony says the City needs to take a look at staffing levels during the COVID-19 crisis and whether the impact of the payroll can be reduced for taxpayers.
"I'm getting asked a lot about city operations, staffing, and projects during the COVID crisis. So I will answer them," Anthony writes on his Facebook page."
He says the City has already had to make decisions on laying off casual city staff and halting hiring of summer staff
"And I believe more hard staffing decisions will have to be made. As this progresses we will have to look at how many of our hard-working and valuable team members are absolutely essential during the crisis.
"I'm thankful that any of our valued, skilled staff that would be affected during this difficult time would be able to benefit from the rapid response of the federal government for helping workers with fast financial help."
But Anthony says the 75 per cent subsidies the federal government is offering to keep people employed or working from home are not available to municipalities, and that puts added pressure on the municipality to find savings.
"As I understand it. We only have our tax base to rely on and the status quo will be unsustainable over a long term crisis where lives are at stake.
"This is a situation that would have been unthinkable a year ago - and now it changes week to week, day to day, and even hourly. We will have to adapt as well and continue to find ways to ensure the safety of citizens and provide the most basic or essential services."
Deputy mayor and budget chief Tanya Vrebosch says council is considering all options but laying off any of the 420 city hall staff is not in the immediate future.
She says 80 part-time, casual and seasonal employees won't be paid.
"We're doing things that are necessary but we are also refocusing our efforts to meet community.needs. The community and citizens are looking to the City saying, 'We need help.'"
She cites the grocery delivery program.
"We've repurposed some of our staff members. Last week alone they handled 175 phone calls. So that's three staff and a dispatcher that have been repurposed trying to answer people's phone calls. We're trying to change how we do business to better serve the citizens."
Having said that, Vrebosch told BayToday it doesn't mean the City isn't looking closely at what people are doing.
"HR staff and senior management are constantly looking at this so it doesn't mean there won't be any more changes. It's always going to be in the conversation but again we won't do it as a knee-jerk reaction, 'Let's start laying people off'. We're constantly watching, but if we have work for them to do that's essential and necessary then we're going to keep doing it. If you don't do it now you'll have a backlog when you get back.
"If its permanent long-term staff then you have to get into labour agreements. We're not going to start laying off people, there's more to it. Staff are reviewing it I think what we are doing is the right thing."
BayToday reached out to Mayor McDonald to ask about efforts to save money on staff reductions but received no reply.
