Earn Your Money Councillors: BENN
The fiscal crisis that Mayor Mark Sutcliffe acknowledged in August is but a manifestation of a prolonged period of financial mismanagement by Ottawa City Hall.
It is often the case that when crises hit, there will be collateral damage. The people who were responsible for the mismanagement are usually the ones tasked with developing the solution. A circular reference that looks much like a toilet bowl mid-flush comes to mind.
A successful solution is one that addresses all segments of the income statement.
Revenues must go up. Revenues being property taxes. Think closer to 10 per cent than five. For residents already facing financial strain arising from recent inflationary times, an additional several hundred dollars a year may cause down stream financial problems.
Operating expenses must come down. The biggest controllable expense being programs and related compensation. Those cuts will result in some services being eliminated. In other cases, service levels will decrease (see OC Transpo’s plan for this month).
As The Voter has explained in her columns, human resources gymnastics routines invariably cost the wrong people their jobs, while retaining the jobs of many who contributed to the financial mismanagement.
I am not without empathy for anyone who loses their job. It is a stressful time. How do we make our mortgage payments? What about the financial support we promised to our university bound kids?
Having said that, continuing to ignore the inevitable should not be on the menu. Nor should whining about how unfair the provincial and federal governments are being. Difficult times require difficult decisions. Now is the time for city councillors to truly earn (as contrasted with merely receive) their six-figure compensation packages.
Ron Benn, a finance executive, has been a member of the Centrepointe Community Association for the better part of three decades.
For You:
City Layoffs: Sad But Necessary
Cuts Mean Good People Leave The City: THE VOTER
Fairness Campaign: The Hypocrisy Is Overwhelming
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I keep wondering if significant savings might be realized by increased competitive bidding and eliminating the sole source contracts like $60 million for the second phase LRT design, and more recently for Lansdowne design work.
Let’s take the corporate approach: every department head shaves 10% of their staff. I would exclude anyone that is client facing and 10% would be a good start.
% cuts – like budgets set according to a % increase are simply inappropriate. Always. That is numbers management. Not program or quality management. And being (always) inappropriate the worst thing an elected city council can do is delegate that operation to staff. That makes for a double disaster.
I recall Mayor Sutcliffe, in his remarks during what passed for a debate at last year’s budget review, asking senior management to ‘find’ millions of dollars of cost savings.
There is no better time than now to have them table a report.
> What cost savings were achieved – details per program, $, impact on public.
> How much of these cost savings are ‘permanent’ versus mere deferrals until another fiscal year;
> Were any of these cost savings overridden by new expenditures? $, head count
In a city that is so fixated on presenting good news, the silence on this topic is deafening.