- by John A. Tamming

In Bananas, Woody Allen’s 1971 take on a Central American dictator, the newly “elected” General announces that from now on, all the people shall speak Swedish and wear their underwear on the outside. Oh yes, all children under the age of 16 shall be deemed to be 16.

Such arbitrary exercise of power is not available to the elected in Canada, including (perhaps especially including) municipal councils. Instead, one’s room for action is limited by a thicket of laws, regulations, arbitral processes, debenture caps, free market realities and plain old inertia.

This directly impacts budget talks. Consider, for example, fire, police and management costs.

Fire Costs: Want to slash fire costs? We have taken steps to reduce that budget long term (I cannot comment further at this time) but use of a machete is simply not in the cards. We are restricted by a poorly drafted collective agreement and by mandatory arbitration. This town does not need 30 full time fire personnel. Most know this, including, I suspect, some of the fire fighters themselves. The trick is to negotiate toward plausible staffing levels that an arbitrator might just award. If you try to negotiate for terms far beyond what any arbitrator would grant, any union would simply fail the negotiations and proceed to arbitration. The legal costs incurred in pursuit of such a loss, just to make a statement, can not be justified. So, we are left with incremental steps.

Police Costs: If we take a run at the police budget, council is barred by law from getting into the operational weeds as to the number of uniforms, guns and photocopiers; it may only vote up or down on the proposed budget. If the city does offer a thumbs down, police services may appeal to a provincial tribunal. So again, complete fiscal power lies not with council but is distributed. Two years ago, I lost an 8 to 1 vote to slash police costs. Any substantial reform will have to come after the next election.

Staff Overhead: We pay 33% as staff overhead over and above their base pay. Of this, 14% represents the city’s pension contribution, the rest comprises drug, disability and dental. Again, collective agreements preclude tampering with such benefits for unionized staff. You can adjust this downward for new hires among non-unionized staff and, arguably, also for existing staff. It’s more than a few coins lying under some chesterfield cushions, but not much more.

Waste Management and Green Bins: And then there are the restraints of the free market. Think we pay too much for waste management? Wait until you only have one company tendering to your request for proposals and then see how much leverage you have. Think green bins should be a no brainer? Again, go try to get a competitive price (by that I mean something under $300 per residence) and then we can talk.

Let’s be clear. We do have lots of room to adjust budgets. The airport sale proves that. Transit should also be on the list (next article). And, though I have not met a city staff member whom I did not appreciate, there are just too many people in management and white collar positions at city hall.

The province just gave us $100,000 to examine such staffing efficiencies and we will have a free report from an outside consultant next fall. But we don’t have to wait until 2023 before we take any action along these lines.

John A. Tamming is an Owen Sound City Councillor. Part One of his reflections on the 2021 budget can be found here.