The Capital Regional District should take a hard look in the mirror before it hires another 20 full-time equivalent staff. The government that Greater Victorians love to hate is considering a staff proposal to add more employees to keep up with a booming economy, but first it should examine its operations closely and try to find efficiencies.
Although residents and politicians grumble about the CRD, it provides many of the co-ordinated services that we use every day: water, sewage treatment, parks, waste disposal and others. Effective management of those services is important to us, even if we tend to take them for granted.
As the region grows, those services are under increasing pressure, so it’s not surprising that managers see a need for more staff.
“The economy is a big part of it. It’s going gangbusters,” said chief financial officer Nelson Chan. He said that one-third of all construction jobs in the province are in Greater Victoria.
Things are going so well that Chan said: “Everything that the CRD supports has been growing faster than the CRD in the last five years.”
The booming economy is good for tradespeople looking for jobs, but not so good if you’re trying to find a tradesperson — or an overstretched local-government worker.
The CRD employs a lot of those local-government workers: 571 full-time and 500 part-time. In 2016, their salaries amounted to $46.8 million, including $23.8 million to employees earning more than $75,000 a year. Its total budget is $500 million a year.
It’s not clear how much the proposed 20 new hires would cost, but a rough estimate is $2 million a year.
The new staff cover the broad range of CRD services: operators for the Rainbow Road Indoor Pool on Salt Spring Island, staff to oversee regulatory responsibilities, finance experts for the sewage project, computer security specialists, a supervisor for the new sewage-treatment plant, an engineer, a waste technician, a database specialist, a biologist to manage invasive species and others.
A handful of the jobs are related to the sewage project.
Pay for those new people would not all come out of tax increases. Water staff would be covered by utility charges and Salt Spring pool employees would mainly be covered by fees.
How much of it all shows up on your tax bill depends on where you live, as municipalities and electoral areas participate in some services, but not others.
While the growing pressure caused by the hot economy is obvious, it should also be obvious to CRD directors and managers that this shopping list of proposed hiring is a good opportunity to examine the district’s operations before moving ahead.
Some area politicians, such as Langford Mayor Stew Young, think the CRD is already big enough, and should be doing a better job with the people it has before it considers hiring more.
Are some existing services no longer necessary? Is there room for consolidation? Can some jobs be left unfilled when people move on? How necessary are the proposed new positions?
For instance, is it essential to the CRD’s mission to hire a part-time climate-action program assistant or a full-time staffer for a tenant-engagement pilot project, as suggested in the staff report?
Local politicians and taxpayers would have more confidence in the CRD’s shopping list if they knew the district had planned its diet carefully.
