posted August 20, 2007

HOW TO CUT COSTS AND STILL HAVE FUN

David Miller

When Mayor Miller raised the alarm, City managers decided that one way to save money was by cutting the hours of Parks and Recreation part-time workers. Community centres are to be closed on Mondays; outdoor ice rinks are to stay locked until January; golf courses will close a week early; and the cleanup workers will disappear from the parks well before the leaves fall.

There are some puzzling things here. For example: community centres also make money, by charging fees for daycare or weight rooms or swimming lessons. Laying off the part-time program staff will save on wages but will also mean lost fees (and full-time staff will have to be paid whether the centres are open or not).

As for keeping outdoor ice rinks closed until January: these rinks use less energy during the low-sun months of November and December. Not opening them until the days are starting to lengthen means higher energy costs. (Earlier opening and earlier closing would make more financial sense). In addition, the City has just spent $10.3 million doing energy retrofits on all the outdoor rinks and some of the indoor ones. And according to the capital projects list on the City’s website, $4.089 million was just spent doing repairs and replacements of outdoor rinks citywide last year. In this neighbourhood, for example, Wallace Emerson just got a new rink for $1.1million, and Dufferin Rink got new pipes for $200,000 this spring. Does it really make sense to board up the house after you just renovated?

It’s possible that the outdoor rinks have been selected because the energy retrofit program is unusual. It was done on the assumption that if the City borrowed the $10.3 million to put in weather-stripping, pipes-insulation and computer controls for the ice-making plants, the energy savings would be so high that the retrofit work would in effect pay for itself. The money saved on utility bills would be used to pay off the loan. However there was no reliable baseline of previous energy costs, and now, as utility costs keep going up anyway, Parks Forestry and Recreation must pay high utility bills and the borrowed money – at the rate of $1.3 million a year (for the next ten years). What’s unusual is that the money must come out of the operating budget, which is also meant to staff the rinks. It may be that Parks management is a little doubtful about the “deemed savings” forecast for this project (without an energy baseline, who can tell if the City got value for money?). However one sure way to reduce energy costs is not to run the rinks.

There must be better ways to save money than these citywide closures. One suggestion: save money on payroll. Since management staff are the highest paid, they can set the good example. If each of the 226 management staff of Parks, Forestry and Recreation worked one four-day-week a month, expenditures would go down nearly $1.5 million (yes, “Rae days” for management). That’s a start! And there are other good possibilities, long-term solutions to a problem that won’t go away even with new taxes. This needs well-informed public discussion! CELOS is putting together its Parks, Forestry and Recreation budget report for citizens, so everyone can help with solutions. Fact-checking has been tricky since questions often take a long time to get responses. But the report’s first version is almost ready – watch for it at the park or on the web site. It will make lively reading, and hopefully, lively discussion too.