There may be a lot of narrative about job losses in North Bay lately, but there won’t be any cuts from around the City Council table any time soon.
Councillor Mac Bain has been lobbying his colleagues to reduce the amount of council seats to eight members from the current 10, not including the Mayor, over the past few weeks.
But Bain’s motion was defeated by a 7-3 vote on Monday night, with only Coun. Mike Anthony and Mayor Al McDonald supporting the call to cut the two positions.
As it became evident that the the majority of the politicians didn’t support the innovative approach, Bain tried to justify his intent for City Council to walk the walk and lead by example when it comes to alleviating some of the pressure to the annual budget.
By Bain’s estimation, cutting the size of council as per their vote on Monday could have saved the city up to $50,000 a year.
He said that, despite eight being an arbitrary number to kickstart the conversation, the rejected vote makes it difficult for council to scrutinize city staff and ask senior management to find efficiencies in a similar fashion.
“We challenge our staff to constantly look at what they do: can they do it cheaper? More efficiently?” said Bain. “For us to say ‘it’s ok for staff to do it, but we don’t want to do it ourselves because we might have to do a little bit more work,’ I don’t think is quite right.
“Keep in mind that we do great work and we do all work very hard at the agencies, boards and commissions that we do represent,” Bain added. “But when we turn around and say to staff ‘we want you to work a little bit harder,’ it’s going to be tough.”
He said the original decision to govern with 10 councillors and a mayor was also an arbitrary decision based on outdated growth forecasts that didn’t exactly come to fruition.
But many around the table are still in favour of investigating increasing council’s salary on the basis that they are stretched too thin with a demanding schedule.
Most notably, they point to their obligated duties on the various agencies, boards and committees as eating up a large part of the calendar for not enough in return.
Some of the most demanding of which include the District of Nipissing Social Services Administration Board, North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit, Cassellholme, Police Services Board, and many others.
“DNSSAB is like council number two; the workload is just immense,” deputy mayor Sheldon Forgette said as an example. “I barely get to see my family as it is, so if we did reduce down to eight councillors, I don’t see that workload getting any better.”
The city would also have to reconfigure the board structures to maintain their majority representation, which brought concern to those who pointed to some boards that have a legally prescribed number of councillor seats.
However, as the Mayor and Bain clarified later, municipalities can appointment citizen representatives in some instances.
“There’s no question that the workload is tremendous on council,” said McDonald. “But we have professionals sitting around the table and this was a wonderful opportunity to be much more efficient and deliver the services we need to provide to our citizens.”
Some, like Coun. Mike Anthony, were on board with the idea of saving money by reducing council positions, but also said the pending staff review to increase the politicians’ pay would negate that progress.
“I support this for the savings,” he said on Monday, “but if we ate those up with increases elsewhere, I would be frustrated to see that.”
Councillor Chris Mayne argued that the existing larger council allows for better variety and mix of experience around the table and creates a more fair, democratic system.
“I don’t see this current council arrangement as broken, and I follow the position that if it’s not broken, then why fix it?” he said during the meeting. “A larger council allows for a better mix of new and experienced councillors.
"Two of the people who might have placed lower and may not have made it onto the board this election, I think a lot of us agree have brought a lot to the table this past year,” he added as anecdotal support. “I also feel that a mix of newer councillors, more experienced councillors - a council of 10 - allows for better transition and experience sharing.”
George Maroosis, who seconded Bain’s original motion to catalyze the conversation, didn’t support Monday’s final vote. He did, however, say that if his colleagues were looking for more public participation in the way municipal politics are run, then the issue of a ward system, as opposed to the current at-large operation, should be thrown into the ring.
“Generally, this has been pretty silent [from the public], but anyone that has spoken to me has said ‘how come we don’t have a ward system’ and, of course, we took that off the table right away,” said the veteran councillor.
“There’s just no way that you can reduce the city’s representation on many of those boards; it’s our obligation,” he added, “but if you want to have a debate, introduce the ward system because I continually have people come up to me who want to know who their councillor is that represents them in a particular area.”
Under the city’s procedural bylaw, council would have to wait a year to bring the issue back up again. But if the decisive vote was any indication on Monday, restructuring the Council table won’t be happening this term.
