Saanich council recently lamented the lack of turnout at last year’s budget deliberations. During the same discussion, Mayor Richard Atwell called for Saanich to develop a participatory budget process that would expand public input. CAO Paul Thorkelson pointed out that Saanich lacks the capacity for such a process (whatever that means), so we are in a Catch-22.
There is a simple reason why there is a lack of turnout at budget meetings. Council ignores suggestions from the public about the budget, as well as many other subjects. I remember the 2015 budget meetings. A Saanich resident had obviously spent many hours examining the budget documents, and had come up with many areas where cuts were both possible and desirable. I don’t recall hearing any members of council thank him for the time and energy he spent, and neither did they take up any of his suggestions. If council doesn’t listen to public input, then you can’t blame the public for throwing up its hands and saying “What’s the use?”
Thorkelsson also mentioned a list of cuts worth $634,000 that council considered last year, which they declined to adopt.
“If council is concerned about making significant reductions to the overall budget in the community, that means reducing services,” said Thorkelsson. “We have squeezed, and I expressed it last year, the excessive capacity, the quote, unquote fat out of the system in Saanich a long time ago,” he said.
If Saanich residents believe that malarkey, then I have some shares in the Blue Bridge I would be happy to sell them. There is a major expense, salaries and wages, amounting to over 50 per cent of the budget that could, and should be trimmed. The big money is pulled down almost exclusively by exempt employees.
Exempt (apparently exempt from all scrutiny) employees at Saanich are living high off the hog at taxpayers expense. Our CAO made just under $250,000 in 2016, not including benefits and expenses. But he is far from alone. In 2016 six Saanich employees made more than our prime minister ($170,400), and 24 of them made more than the U.S. President’s Chief of Staff ($124,000 Can.). The average CAO salary in Canadian cities in 2016 was $92,959. 51 Saanich employees draw paycheques bigger than that. In 2016 221 employees made more than $75,000, and 98 made more than $100,000. That is down slightly from a 2015 high of 224 and 137 respectively.
In a separate debate Mayor Atwell was the only member of council to vote against a change to a bylaw that would give council even less control over wages. Atwell said the proposed revisions give council no say about staff wages and severance. The bylaw would codify the current practice that sees the chief administrative officer select and hire staff. But Atwell questioned this language. The CAO is the only senior exempt staff member who has an indefinite contract with the municipality. If the proposed bylaw is approved, then he is free to set the wages of other staff members, and if Council disapproves, they can’t fire him without a huge severance payout. In 2016 we continued to pay more than $124,000 in severance to the last CAO who was fired at the end of 2014. In other words, if Council approves this bylaw they will have ceded even the tiny bit of control they have now.
Apparently, our Council lacks the guts to take a strong stand on just about anything you care to mention (with the exception of making Saanich a nuclear free zone??). This year, more than any other year, they have an opportunity to do something positive, without fearing the consequences. Why, you ask? Because hopefully, by November 2018 the majority of the old guard will be gone anyway.
Bob Etheridge
Saanich