- The Municipality now has its own Facebook page.
- The closing date for the hotel development proposals on the Crowsnest Centre site is May 18.
- The tender for the demolition of the Crowsnest Centre calls for a date of August 30 for the completion of the project.
- There was an announcement that a collective agreement containing “numerous changes” was concluded with CUPE last week they are waiting for CUPE to ratify it.
- Administration requested to continue the new meeting schedule until September, and re stated their preference to go to two meetings a month.
- Municipal Off site levies are suspended until the end of January 2013, then to be reviewed at that point.
- Taxes for the Food bank were waived.
- Mayor Decoux asked the rest of council what kind of reaction they received to the budget information letter, most of council stared at each other and gave the impression that they received little response. Mayor Decoux announced that he had received “146 emails and 15 phone messages” most of them very favorable to the newsletter.
- Administration requested that council approve the release of half the funding for the Museum now and the other half after administration meets with the new Historical Society board. Administration is also looking at ways to assist the museum with their Insurance, Utilities, and Maintenance costs. They were instructed to report back to council on May 15.
- Request to allow the use of quads for the Sinister seven event approved by council, lots of comments around the room about how great it is to have an event that brings thousands of people and lots of money to the community.
- Bylaw 847,2012 Peace Officer/Enforcement Bylaw, Passed first reading
- Bylaw 849,2012 Municipal Emergency Management Committee and Agency Bylaw, Passed first reading.
- Bylaw 846,2012 False Alarm Bylaw, Passed first reading
- Councilor Gail requested that the municipality write a letter to the provincial government supporting the push to twin Highway 63
- Rum Runner Days web site has been updated.
Showing posts with label Cupe Collective Agreement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cupe Collective Agreement. Show all posts
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Council meeting of May 1,2012
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Need work "we" are hiring
By "we" I mean the good taxpayers of the Crowsnest Pass.
Just a matter of a few months ago our leaders hired a "New" Public Works Manager, I entered the G+P meeting last night just as the Mayor was introducing the "New" Fire Chief.
If you take a moment to click over to the Municipality site @ http://www.town.crowsnestpass.ab.ca/finance-a-administration/employment you will see "we" are also in the process of hiring a Building Inspector/Safety codes officer, Development Officer, Director of Planning, Engineering and Operations, and a Manager of Corporate Services.
Wow if I was on the negotiating committee for CUPE I would be rubbing my hands and thinking what a wonderful year 2012 is going to be, nothing better for bargaining than an employer that's flush with cash and willing to spend it.
Least we forget "we" still have the Director of Community Services to come. Does anybody believe that it will end there?
Interesting video from You tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge4X86CxOUY this story was pointed out to me by one of my reqular readers. Its from the USA but pretty much in line with what's going on in the Pass of course on a much smaller scale. Please take a couple of minutes and check it out.
Just a matter of a few months ago our leaders hired a "New" Public Works Manager, I entered the G+P meeting last night just as the Mayor was introducing the "New" Fire Chief.
If you take a moment to click over to the Municipality site @ http://www.town.crowsnestpass.ab.ca/finance-a-administration/employment you will see "we" are also in the process of hiring a Building Inspector/Safety codes officer, Development Officer, Director of Planning, Engineering and Operations, and a Manager of Corporate Services.
Wow if I was on the negotiating committee for CUPE I would be rubbing my hands and thinking what a wonderful year 2012 is going to be, nothing better for bargaining than an employer that's flush with cash and willing to spend it.
Least we forget "we" still have the Director of Community Services to come. Does anybody believe that it will end there?
Interesting video from You tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge4X86CxOUY this story was pointed out to me by one of my reqular readers. Its from the USA but pretty much in line with what's going on in the Pass of course on a much smaller scale. Please take a couple of minutes and check it out.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
The drive to seven is on. Paying for it.
After a year of task forces, strategic planning, creation of policy and procedures.
We learnt just a few weeks back that the municipality has been stream lined from the previous cumbersome structure of four departments each with a director reporting to the CAO for a total administration team of five people.
Down to a thrifty three departments with a team of up to six administrators reporting to a CAO for a total administration team of seven people.
Today I see the next step to the drive to seven is in motion the Director of Planning-Engineering and Operations has been posted. http://www.aamdc.com/classifieds/jobs/guest/detailjob/141-director-of-planning-engineering-and-operations
People keep asking me around town how are they going to pay for all of these positions plus the strategic plan.
I see a number of ways they are going to achieve this.
1. The strategic plan some of those issues are a one time cost so they need to find some easily accessible money. (Back taxes with the big jump in penalties they are anticipating great globs of money to flow in next year prior to those penalties kicking in)
2. Savings from the collective agreement the contract with CUPE is up on January 31st, it was not by accident that Councilor Mitchell was replaced with Councilor Saindon on the bargaining committee I suspect they will probably bring in a high priced lawyer or consultant to assist in this process. There is potentially large savings in the collective agreement the only problem is you have to get the folks sitting on the other side to agree to those changes.
3. The perpetual money generators (more often referred to as taxpayers) the message as already been sent with the increase in franchise fees, ($200,000 per year) and a tax increase last spring of 2% that most people anticipated to be zero.
4. User fees I anticipate that a lot of the fees that people use to pay for various municipal services will be increased.
5. Funding for external groups, many organizations receive funding from the municipality; Museum, Allied arts, Underground mine, Women's Centre etc etc I think you will see less funding for these types of groups.
6. New assessment most people don't realize that every year new assessment increases the tax base by 1-2% which should easily in today's economy cover any cost of living increases the municipality incurs.
It will be interesting six months from now to look back at this list and see how accurate my predictions were!
We learnt just a few weeks back that the municipality has been stream lined from the previous cumbersome structure of four departments each with a director reporting to the CAO for a total administration team of five people.
Down to a thrifty three departments with a team of up to six administrators reporting to a CAO for a total administration team of seven people.
Today I see the next step to the drive to seven is in motion the Director of Planning-Engineering and Operations has been posted. http://www.aamdc.com/classifieds/jobs/guest/detailjob/141-director-of-planning-engineering-and-operations
People keep asking me around town how are they going to pay for all of these positions plus the strategic plan.
I see a number of ways they are going to achieve this.
1. The strategic plan some of those issues are a one time cost so they need to find some easily accessible money. (Back taxes with the big jump in penalties they are anticipating great globs of money to flow in next year prior to those penalties kicking in)
2. Savings from the collective agreement the contract with CUPE is up on January 31st, it was not by accident that Councilor Mitchell was replaced with Councilor Saindon on the bargaining committee I suspect they will probably bring in a high priced lawyer or consultant to assist in this process. There is potentially large savings in the collective agreement the only problem is you have to get the folks sitting on the other side to agree to those changes.
3. The perpetual money generators (more often referred to as taxpayers) the message as already been sent with the increase in franchise fees, ($200,000 per year) and a tax increase last spring of 2% that most people anticipated to be zero.
4. User fees I anticipate that a lot of the fees that people use to pay for various municipal services will be increased.
5. Funding for external groups, many organizations receive funding from the municipality; Museum, Allied arts, Underground mine, Women's Centre etc etc I think you will see less funding for these types of groups.
6. New assessment most people don't realize that every year new assessment increases the tax base by 1-2% which should easily in today's economy cover any cost of living increases the municipality incurs.
It will be interesting six months from now to look back at this list and see how accurate my predictions were!
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Coming soon, time to pay the piper
Last week at the council meeting the head of finance was giving the council an update on the financial state of the municipality to the middle of August. Within that discussion somebody pointed out that there is an almost $300,000 liability for accumulated sick time for the municipal staff, a couple of other councilors seemed unaware of this. Which surprised me in the sense that this number appears in the annual municipal financial statements every year, which council just reviewed three months ago.
For the benefit of my readers where does this come from?
Municipal employees hired after July 1 2008 receive one and a half sick days per month (prior to that it was two days per month this was changed during the bargaining process at that time). If they do not use these days they get to accumulate them up to a maximum of 120 days, which they are then paid out on a 50% basis when they retire. (For example 60 days times 8 hours @ approx $30 per hour equals $14,400 per employee). The difficulty with this benefit is that after an employee has been with the town for less than seven years the 120 days are accumulated and in some cases it becomes an additional 18 days a year off. If they do not use them they lose them, there is simply no incentive to not use them.
Now they are aware maybe this council will have some ideas to deal with this issue.
The next issue related to this and where it becomes increasing difficult to manage the municipal finances especially when the workforce is expanding is the cost of payroll. I am told that the town of Pincher Creek’s employees just turned down a three year contract with a wage increase of 3%, 2.5% and 2.75%. The Municipalities contract with CUPE is up at the end of the year, applying those same increases to the Pass would see some huge additional costs. In the 2010 financial statement (which would not cover the new positions created this year total cost of Salaries, Wages and Benefits was $4,923,486 increase those numbers by the percentages above 2012 would go to $5,071,191, 2013 $5,197,970, and 2014 $5,340,915.
That’s an additional $839,618 over the next three years or to put it in very simple terms it would take an average increase of 2.4% in taxes each year to accommodate those additional costs. Several factors that will come in to play here; the impact of the new positions created this year, maybe Cupe will be willing to accept less in this round of bargaining than they would in Pincher and surrounding areas. Or the workforce through gains in efficiencies will shrink enough to offset any additional wage increases.
Just some things to think about especially if there is further consideration to increase the municipal workforce.
For the benefit of my readers where does this come from?
Municipal employees hired after July 1 2008 receive one and a half sick days per month (prior to that it was two days per month this was changed during the bargaining process at that time). If they do not use these days they get to accumulate them up to a maximum of 120 days, which they are then paid out on a 50% basis when they retire. (For example 60 days times 8 hours @ approx $30 per hour equals $14,400 per employee). The difficulty with this benefit is that after an employee has been with the town for less than seven years the 120 days are accumulated and in some cases it becomes an additional 18 days a year off. If they do not use them they lose them, there is simply no incentive to not use them.
Now they are aware maybe this council will have some ideas to deal with this issue.
The next issue related to this and where it becomes increasing difficult to manage the municipal finances especially when the workforce is expanding is the cost of payroll. I am told that the town of Pincher Creek’s employees just turned down a three year contract with a wage increase of 3%, 2.5% and 2.75%. The Municipalities contract with CUPE is up at the end of the year, applying those same increases to the Pass would see some huge additional costs. In the 2010 financial statement (which would not cover the new positions created this year total cost of Salaries, Wages and Benefits was $4,923,486 increase those numbers by the percentages above 2012 would go to $5,071,191, 2013 $5,197,970, and 2014 $5,340,915.
That’s an additional $839,618 over the next three years or to put it in very simple terms it would take an average increase of 2.4% in taxes each year to accommodate those additional costs. Several factors that will come in to play here; the impact of the new positions created this year, maybe Cupe will be willing to accept less in this round of bargaining than they would in Pincher and surrounding areas. Or the workforce through gains in efficiencies will shrink enough to offset any additional wage increases.
Just some things to think about especially if there is further consideration to increase the municipal workforce.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Update from the Crowsnest Pass
I was going to title this update something different but then I was informed, that "your right to know" or "rumors and facts" were already taken.
So I will just stick to the old fashioned bland Update from the Crowsnest Pass.
What's happened since I last posted with good old politics in the Crowsnest Pass?
Just before Christmas we achieved several things:
We completed a budget prior to the end of the year a first since I have been on council.
How did we do this? several ways we directed administration to bring back a budget with no more than a 3% increase, that's the good news.
Then we increased our revenue in the following areas:
Water Rates increase by $3.00 per month per household (last increase 2002)
Garbage Rates increase by $1.50 per month per household (last increase 2007)
Municipal Electrical Rates will increase $12.28 per month between now and July 1, (last increase 2002). This will bring our rates in line with Fortis in the Crowsnest Pass we are in the unusually position of half our tenants are on the municipal system and half are on Fortis.
You may ask why rates have not increased since 2002, that's a good question and to ensure that it does not happen again administration as been directed to bring to Council on a annual basis a review of all municipal charges, fees, and fines.
The other new measure we introduced was a Minimum tax, $500 per tax roll number. There is no question this is a new revenue stream for the Municipality. Several comments based on last years mill rate if your property was worth more than $50,000 you were already paying more than $500. If you own a second property next to your principal property that you only use for your on needs you can consolidate in to the principal property and avoid the minimum tax.
The net result of this budget is that the typically average resident is going to see the lowest tax increase in the last five years. (subject to variations in assessment values).
Just prior to Christmas we also reached a collective agreement with our employees (CUPE), its a two year agreement, which I will not comment further on until our employees have had the chance to ratify it on Jan 21.
Crowsnest Centre, yes the saga continues. Despite the society taking the position that they did not need municipal tax dollars for 2009, we the taxpayers did have to pay their Nexen and telus bills in December. And yes the municipality did pay those bills out of reserve dollars that were generated by an insurance payout on the old centre budget.
Where I get confused is that some people think that those Insurance dollars belonged to the centre. The last I checked the Centre is an asset owned by the Municipality of Crowsnest Pass (taxpayers) just like the arenas, the equipment we own and any other assets. Which pot the money goes into and where it is spent is a decision made by the "elected" representatives of the taxpayers, not some unelected board that we never have to face an election.
Newspaper advertising, finally after arguing this issue for 5 years council agreed to tender this out to the lowest bidder. Our advertising cost for 2009 will be somewhere around $30-35,000 previous years as high as $110,000 that's a savings of roughly $70,000 a year over the five years that I have raised this issue a potential savings of $350,000 that could have purchase four additional used graders. Without costing the taxpayer one extra dollar.
Arguments were made that one papers page was larger than the other, I don't care, as long as the information can be read does it matter if the words are larger in one paper than the other? It was a simple decision in May and again in December, which paper had the lowest cost per page. That is the way I will always vote on this issue. The other argument that was made was that tax dollars are going out of town. Does that mean we should spend higher taxpayer dollars to give a contract to a local contractor?
That will work well when we are handing out $5,000,000 Infrastructure contracts.
Off site levies, it came to my attention just before the holidays that a local resident, who had been living in a older single wide trailer for years had purchased a new modular home put it on the same lot, and was told that he was going to be charged off site levies. My impression of off site levies, were that they would be charged against new developments where somebody was taking a bare piece of land and adding burden to the municipalities infrastructure, or if you were taking a piece of land that had one residence on it and replacing it with a duplex, apartment building etc, where once again the burden on municipal infrastructure was being increased. Fortunately after a debate amongst council it was agreed that the bylaw would be rewritten to ensure this does not happen again.
Going back to Budget, even though council as passed the budget the process is not completely over at this point. We have to wait for the province to set the educational levy so we can set the mill rate. In between I am hoping that council will keep working to cut costs and increase the surplus, we have a problem that is not going to go away.
Our reserves will be down to $670,000 by the end of the year, we are spending $520,000 this year out of reserves to complete capital projects. What happens after 2011 when our reserves run out. We need to start putting dollars back into those reserves this year.
Anyway a little update on things in the Crowsnest Pass
So I will just stick to the old fashioned bland Update from the Crowsnest Pass.
What's happened since I last posted with good old politics in the Crowsnest Pass?
Just before Christmas we achieved several things:
We completed a budget prior to the end of the year a first since I have been on council.
How did we do this? several ways we directed administration to bring back a budget with no more than a 3% increase, that's the good news.
Then we increased our revenue in the following areas:
Water Rates increase by $3.00 per month per household (last increase 2002)
Garbage Rates increase by $1.50 per month per household (last increase 2007)
Municipal Electrical Rates will increase $12.28 per month between now and July 1, (last increase 2002). This will bring our rates in line with Fortis in the Crowsnest Pass we are in the unusually position of half our tenants are on the municipal system and half are on Fortis.
You may ask why rates have not increased since 2002, that's a good question and to ensure that it does not happen again administration as been directed to bring to Council on a annual basis a review of all municipal charges, fees, and fines.
The other new measure we introduced was a Minimum tax, $500 per tax roll number. There is no question this is a new revenue stream for the Municipality. Several comments based on last years mill rate if your property was worth more than $50,000 you were already paying more than $500. If you own a second property next to your principal property that you only use for your on needs you can consolidate in to the principal property and avoid the minimum tax.
The net result of this budget is that the typically average resident is going to see the lowest tax increase in the last five years. (subject to variations in assessment values).
Just prior to Christmas we also reached a collective agreement with our employees (CUPE), its a two year agreement, which I will not comment further on until our employees have had the chance to ratify it on Jan 21.
Crowsnest Centre, yes the saga continues. Despite the society taking the position that they did not need municipal tax dollars for 2009, we the taxpayers did have to pay their Nexen and telus bills in December. And yes the municipality did pay those bills out of reserve dollars that were generated by an insurance payout on the old centre budget.
Where I get confused is that some people think that those Insurance dollars belonged to the centre. The last I checked the Centre is an asset owned by the Municipality of Crowsnest Pass (taxpayers) just like the arenas, the equipment we own and any other assets. Which pot the money goes into and where it is spent is a decision made by the "elected" representatives of the taxpayers, not some unelected board that we never have to face an election.
Newspaper advertising, finally after arguing this issue for 5 years council agreed to tender this out to the lowest bidder. Our advertising cost for 2009 will be somewhere around $30-35,000 previous years as high as $110,000 that's a savings of roughly $70,000 a year over the five years that I have raised this issue a potential savings of $350,000 that could have purchase four additional used graders. Without costing the taxpayer one extra dollar.
Arguments were made that one papers page was larger than the other, I don't care, as long as the information can be read does it matter if the words are larger in one paper than the other? It was a simple decision in May and again in December, which paper had the lowest cost per page. That is the way I will always vote on this issue. The other argument that was made was that tax dollars are going out of town. Does that mean we should spend higher taxpayer dollars to give a contract to a local contractor?
That will work well when we are handing out $5,000,000 Infrastructure contracts.
Off site levies, it came to my attention just before the holidays that a local resident, who had been living in a older single wide trailer for years had purchased a new modular home put it on the same lot, and was told that he was going to be charged off site levies. My impression of off site levies, were that they would be charged against new developments where somebody was taking a bare piece of land and adding burden to the municipalities infrastructure, or if you were taking a piece of land that had one residence on it and replacing it with a duplex, apartment building etc, where once again the burden on municipal infrastructure was being increased. Fortunately after a debate amongst council it was agreed that the bylaw would be rewritten to ensure this does not happen again.
Going back to Budget, even though council as passed the budget the process is not completely over at this point. We have to wait for the province to set the educational levy so we can set the mill rate. In between I am hoping that council will keep working to cut costs and increase the surplus, we have a problem that is not going to go away.
Our reserves will be down to $670,000 by the end of the year, we are spending $520,000 this year out of reserves to complete capital projects. What happens after 2011 when our reserves run out. We need to start putting dollars back into those reserves this year.
Anyway a little update on things in the Crowsnest Pass
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