Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Can you figure out the answer? Numbers in the Crowsnest Pass

So quite a lot of debate in the last few months about the size of the Bureaucracy in the Crowsnest Pass you can read my post below where I presented the numbers of staff in the Municipal Office at the date of the election and the numbers today. In that post I tried to very simply show how there were 19 people working out of that office in Oct/2010 and there are now 24.5 a net gain of 6 people (With a further position coming when the new Peace Officer is hired).

http://crowsnestpasshome.blogspot.ca/2012/03/debating-numbers-in-crowsnest-pass.html

Today I read Councilor Gallant's response I expected something that would say either Dean your correct, or Dean your wrong there are now 24 positions and back at the last election there was 23. Now from Councilor Gallant post below it appears he as attempted to justify the positions. We and everybody around town could debate that for the next 18 months. The intent of my previous post was to point out that the bureaucracy has grown by one third in the last eighteen months I do not believe that Councilor Gallant has answered that comment do you? Read  his comments below and then vote on the right hand side.

For myself I have two simple questions was the number of 19 employees in October 2010 accurate.
Second is the number of 24.5 employees today incorrect. Go through both lists and tell me where I am wrong.



http://briangallant.ca/wordpress/2012/04/10/municipal-staffing-facts/

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

After reading Gallants comments the only thing I got was an headache.
Why can't they just tell us how many employees then and now. Plus once again he danced around the cost of consultants just tell us how much the municipality since the election.
Is it that difficult?

Chris

Anonymous said...

So Mr Gallant tell us how much higher

"As a contractor the amount paid was a bit higher than having a permanent CAO in place"

Larry

Anonymous said...

That sure clears things up!!!!

Anonymous said...

Well I just read Gallants comments for the fifth time between last night and this morning (confusion bigtime). I was talking to an employee at the Pincher Creek Office I asked her how many people work in your office(Don't quote me for sure this was a couple of weeks back) but she said 4 administrators and 8 hourly.
If somebody asked me the same question about here, especially after reading Gallant's comments.
I would answer "well we did have a vacancy in the CAO position, the Director of whatever left, we felt a need for more coverage in the Rec department, and we needed a fire chief" back to the question we have somewhere between 10 and 30 employees in our office.
Tip my hat to Councillor Gallant he answers the issue in a very political way, no numbers nothing that he can be pinned down on later.

Rick

Anonymous said...

This may seem like a stupid question. Wouldn't seven administrators cost a lot more than four?

Anne

Anonymous said...

I tried to sort out the changes from the numbers you supplied, I got:

Before:
Administration- 5
Hourly and Contract Employees- 15
Total- 20

After:
Administration- 7
Hourly and Contract Employees- 18.5
Total- 25.5

Increase:
Administration- 2
Hourly and Contract Employees- 3.5
(Rec and FCSS-1
HR-1
Building Inspector-1
Weed Inspector- 0.5)
Total- 5.5


Near as I can figure, Gallant's "new" positions are:

1 Fire Chief
1 other administrator
1 Recreation Programmer
1 Legislative Clerk
1/2 Finance Clerk
Total 4.5

If we cross off the 2 Admins and Rec from each list, we are left with the points of disagreement:

Dean:
HR-1
Building Inspector-1
Agricultural Fieldperson- 0.5

Gallant:
1 Legislative Clerk
0.5 Finance Clerk

Anonymous said...

If they don't know how bloated the bureuacracy is, maybe they can just give us, the decreasing amount of taxpayers, the bottom line and let us compare it to previous years.

Anonymous said...

Why is this so difficult.
If we had 1 CAO in 2010 and 1 in 2012 say that.
Don't give me well according to the strategic plan, or we could really use somebody to write grants.
In the private sector numbers are kept simple in the public sector confusion comes before numbers!
That seems backwards to me should things not be so much more simple and transparent in the public sector. After all isn't it the taxpayers that pay the way?

Anonymous said...

This is not rocket science. Take a community which is not growing, hire consultants who charge something that appears to be between $1000 to $1500 per day, plus expenses, and keep them for a few months, and don’t be too transparent about the cost. After all, this is just a little additional administrative cost. It looks like they have credentials, so their advice appears exactly what is needed. Without adding to the tax base, add some additional administrators and support staff. Does not matter if they are called Directors or Managers, or Chiefs – what is in the name? Budget time and what to do? Raise taxes? Cut services? Close facilities? The word “additional” comes to mind a lot.

Anonymous said...

4:12 you are so right. I will hazard a guess that these consultants are use to working in communties that have lots of money.

Anonymous said...

Executive summary of my number crunching on the number of new positions:

I assume (hope) that Dean's HR is the same position as Gallant's Legislative Clerk, just retitled.

Then:

Dean's "innuendo and speculation" - 5

My calculation based on Dean's lists - 5

Gallant's "facts" - 5

(For ease of comparison, all three numbers are adjusted to include the half positions Agricultural Fieldperson and Finance Clerk but exclude the Building Inspector)

Anonymous said...

Annon. 10:15:00 Are you including the positions which did not exitst prior to the Strategic Plan, such as the Fire Chief, assitants, etc?

Anonymous said...

Anon Apr 13, 03:43:00 PM:
"Are you including the positions which did not exitst prior to the Strategic Plan, such as the Fire Chief, assitants, etc?"

These are positions created since the current council came into office in Oct 2010.

Gallant said 3.5 positions, not including the 1/2 Agricultural Fieldperson.

He claims the "Manager of Operations" position was "moved" from a foreman position that had been eliminated before Oct 2010. I included that as a "new" position to arrive at his total 5 (so it would be an "apples to apples" comparison to Dean's numbers). I should have made that clear.

Of course we do not have access to municipal information, so this is all speculative.