North Battleford City Manager Randy Patrick, left, presents a report on staffing reductions and permanent layoffs at council’s meeting Monday. The cutbacks were needed to respond to surmounting financial challenges. (Angela Brown/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

Responding to fiscal restraints

City outlines impact from staff reductions, permanent layoffs

Apr 23, 2019 | 8:53 AM

It was a solemn night at North Battleford City Hall as the city provided more details about plans for staff reductions and permanent layoffs.

“We continue to look for other efficiencies within the organization, but to put the city on long-term sustainable footing, staffing levels had to be amended,” City Manager Randy Patrick said.

Mayor Ryan Bater told reporters following council the city had faced a surmounting number of financial struggles in the past couple of years and needed to reduce its costs.

While the city wasn’t able to say the number of positions that are being reduced at this time, it indicated the total reduction in salary expenses would amount to almost $1.4 million.

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“That represents a 10.5 per cent reduction in staffing costs for the entire city,” said Bater. “The positions will be throughout the entire city government. It will impact every department.”

He said the city is consulting with employee unions in the process. Management is currently involved in that task.

The reductions impact a wide number of departments, including fire services.

Bater said there will be about a $300,000 reduction in city management salaries, as well as about $650,000 less in CUPE positions, about $400,000 down in firefighter positions, and about an $85,000 reduction in Community Safety Officers positions.

The city has faced a number of financial challenges in recent years. Successful commercial tax assessment appeals last year ended up costing the city about $800,000. A number of contract agreement losses also had an impact. The city no longer provides fire services to the R.M. of North Battleford, or to the Saskatchewan Hospital North Battleford, among the setbacks. Further, the city had no land sales last year.

“All of these things combined, just kept adding up,” said Bater. “We kept trying to manage them individually, but when you look at the total amount of financial loss to the city we were in a position where we had to make this decision.”

The mayor said the city doesn’t have any unnecessary positions so it was cognizant of the need to make sure the impact was kept to a minimum.

“The loss of positions is significant in terms of its numbers,” Bater said. “The decisions were made to move this way with the least possible amount of service disruption for city residents. That was the basis of the specific choices.”

The mayor said it was a hard decision to make but council knew while preparing the 2019 budget last fall that it had to task administration with finding efficiencies.

“For a couple of years at least, council has been concerned with having the city on a firm financial footing,” he said.

In 2018, he said the city underwent a number of changes with the executive management team who were directed to look for ways to make the city more fiscally stable.

The mayor stressed that deciding to cut staff was difficult for all.

“Everybody in our city government is important,” Bater said. “A lot of people work very hard to provide services to the residents and visitors of this city, and this is just a circumstance where we’re faced with an impossible decision, and one we had to make.”

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angela.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow