ELORA – Hiring more staff in 2022 proved to be a contentious issue for Centre Wellington council at its Oct. 4 committee of the whole meeting.
Councillors contemplated a staff recommendation to add staff members to the 2021 complement, including:
- digital media associate – request to move from temporary part-time to permanent full-time;
- health and safety position – permanent full-time;
- information technology (IT) coordinator – permanent part-time (full-time if funding partners become available);
- seasonal employee, downtowns – temporary (three-year term) full-time for six months;
- wastewater operator – permanent full-time; and
- recreation programmer – request to move from temporary full-time to permanent full-time.
Total cost of wages and benefits comes in at $429,202 with $96,563 to be funded from prior budgets, $204,573 from taxes and $128,066 from water and wastewater funds.
CAO Andy Goldie explained some of the positions are prompted by provincial legislation, particularly around new water and wastewater requirements, and most are the result of growth in the township.
But councillor Bob Foster didn’t see it that way.
“For eight to 10 years there’s been a pattern of more spending, more taxing, more borrowing and more hiring. I won’t support this Andy,” said Foster.
“You’ve never proven the justification for the hiring; you continue to build your empire and I won’t be voting ‘yes’ to this.”
Mayor Kelly Linton asked Foster to retract the empire-building statement as being “unparliamentary.”
“There’s no truth to it and no justification for saying our CAO is building an empire,” Linton said.
“That’s not the kind of terms we use in respectful council debate.”
When Foster refused, Linton issued a first warning to Foster. According to the new procedural bylaw, the mayor or chair of a meeting can order a member out of a meeting after three warnings.
Earlier in the year councillor Stephan Kitras had asked that there be a business plan attached to any new staffing positions in the proposed budget and he didn’t feel the CAO’s report and explanation on how staff arrived at the recommendation was enough.
Rashid Hasan, manager of human resources, told council that it’s council’s job to develop compensation and hiring policies, and the job of staff to determine if and where new positions are needed.
As Goldie recently announced he is retiring at the end of the year, Hasan said developing those policies should wait for the new CAO to work with council.
The other councillors said the proposed positions were reasonable and justified.
In a 5-2 recorded vote, council approved including the new positions in the 2022 draft budget.
Voting in favour were councillors Steven VanLeeuwen, Kirk McElwain, Ian MacRae, Neil Dunsmore and Linton. Foster and Kitras were opposed.
