A 2023 proposed budget with 12 new “base” staff positions and five “optional enhancement” positions has been advanced by Jasper municipal council for further deliberation.
At their November 15 and 16 budgetary meetings, council discussed each of the positions in depth.
Some of the costs of the increased headcount of the baseline positions are being offset by savings in contracted work, re-scoping of job duties and re-allocation of staff, according to administration. Department budgets included costs of $529,000 in 2023 for the 12 positions classified as “base.” Annualized for 2024, those positions yield a cost of $633,000, excluding any salary or benefits increases.
Council agreed to consider five of the optional positions, improvements which would come with a total annual price tag of approximately $500,000.
“All of the enhancements we’re proposing have a direct correlation to council’s strategic priorities,” Chief Administrative Officer Bill Given said. “Council will decide if it’s the right level of investment.”
Two such enhancements include a new Housing Coordinator position, valued at $69,000 ($85k in 2024) and a Planning and Development Manager ($151,000). Administration has also proposed putting $10 million into the capital budget over the next two years for future residential development.
Mayor Richard Ireland said dedicating such resources in the budget to housing is evidence that council takes the priority seriously.
“It may not produce any house for any person immediately, but having a dedicated staff that’s going to pursue housing options for us is a really strong statement,” Ireland said.
Priority Based Budgeting
When he joined the MOJ in January of 2021, Bill Given, Jasper’s Chief Administrative Officer, promised to bring in a new way of budgeting to the municipality.
At that time, his team was working within the confines of the budget which the council of the day—which was in the last year of its term—had just approved. Given knew it would take some time to implement his favoured methodology.
Now that time has come. Priority Based Budgeting (PBB) is a process which scores the services delivered by the municipality against a strategic plan set by council.
“The idea is to look at the services most closely aligned with the community’s priorities and to re-profile spending away from the services that are less aligned,” Given told The Jasper Local.
It started in the spring, when council determined its six strategic priorities (Community Health, Housing, Relationships, Environment, Organizational Excellence and Advocacy) and the 31 organizational goals which will work towards achieving those priorities.
From there, administration took a deep dive into every municipal job on the books; managers and directors articulated 82 unique “service profiles,’ then rated how those service profiles contribute to the MOJ’s organizational goals on a scale of 0 to 4.
“It allows us to see where there’s weaknesses in current services and where we can enhance those weaknesses,” Given explained.
Armed with that information, detailed in a colour-coded spreadsheet (red indicates gaps in organizational goals, green suggests the service profiles are meeting those benchmarks), councillors are now tasked with determining how best to balance the desire to fill those gaps against the community’s capacity to pay for the services to do just that.
-Bob Covey
Not every enhancement position made it through council’s first filter; administration’s recommendation that the 2023 budget include a dedicated environmental and energy coordinator was shot down, at least in part, after Ireland suggested the services that position would deliver can be performed by existing municipal staff and that further, the town needs an environmental and energy plan before it hires personnel.
“While I respect that energy and the environment are priorities, I don’t see that this position as a way to really achieve that priority,” Ireland said.
Ireland’s argument was so compelling, apparently, that he persuaded councillor Scott Wilson, who was patching into the budget meetings via Zoom, to vote against his own motion to approve the addition of an environmental coordinator position in 2023.
“You convinced me,” Wilson said.
Wilson had another outlying vote on the optional enhancements: he chose not to support the recommendation to include a Fund Development Coordinator position in the 2023 budget (at a cost of $80,000).
For months, council has been discussing the merits of having a staff member help with administrative functions of local non-profits—including, but not limited to, supporting a syndicate of groups working in the area of food security. The Fund Development Coordinator would have a mandate to support these orgs, as well as enhance public engagement, write external funding proposals and increase Indigenous relations, explained Director of Community Development, Christopher Read. It’s a job which he admitted will require a unique suite of skills.
“Finding the right person will be key, that’s true,” Read said. “But it’s my job, and the mangers’ across the department…to make this position have outcomes that align with council’s strategic priorities.”
When asked why he didn’t support the approval of the Fund Development Coordinator position, Wilson suggested simply that not everything proposed will make it through the final cuts.
“We have a lot of work to do to get a palatable budget and I think that means pulling out some of those positions,” he said.
However, councillors Kathleen Waxer and Wendy Hall voiced their support for the Fund Development position.
“I am not in favour of dropping that position,” Hall said.
The remainder of the six proposed enhanced positions—including a certified engineering technologist and an asset coordinator in the Operations Department—were advanced unanimously by the budget committee.
No decisions at the November 15/16 budget meetings were final. Council meets on November 29 for the next round of discussions. They hope to approve the 2023 budget before the new year.
Budget 2023: Labour related expenses by the numbers
- $971,000: Increase in labour-related expenses for the budget proposal’s “base” positions, from 2022 to 2024.
- $1.47 million: Increase in labour-related expenses, including base and optional positions, from 2022 to 2024.
- 67: Average percentage of total municipal expenses comprised of salaries, benefits and contracted services (based on MOJ audited financial statements from 2017 to 2021)
- 99: Current total municipal staff contingent (Full Time Equivalent).
- $1 million current requested increase in municipal taxes for the 2023 budget.
Bob Covey and Andrea Ziegler // bob@thejasperlocal.com
