It may have only been an organizational meeting, but Canmore’s newly elected town council is already making decisions with budget implications.
Council meton Oct. 24 for its annual organizational meeting, which establishes the council schedule for the next year and provides an opportunity for councillors and the mayor to take committee positions.
Lisa de Soto, chief administrative officer, explained that changes to the Alberta Labour Code that take place Jan. 1, 2018 would affect the budget depending on if the meeting schedule resulted in overtime for staff.
The code change sets out that employees paid in time in lieu of overtime worked are to be compensated at 1.5 times the rate – meaning that for every hour of overtime an employee works they bank 1.5 hours as a result. Currently, the legislation sets out a one to one ration for banked overtime.
“Our current practice is most of our employees bank their overtime and take time earned for time worked,” de Soto said, adding managers are not eligible for overtime. “Given the amount of overtime associated with council meetings, for planning and engineering staff in particular, that is something we will have to adjust.”
Council’s meeting schedule has a regular business meeting at 5 p.m. on the first Tuesday of the month, a committee of the whole meeting on the second Tuesday at 1 p.m. and a regular business meeting the third Tuesday of the month at 5 p.m. Public hearings are also a regular occurrence, which typically occur at 6 p.m. on a Tuesday.
Council considered whether to move the third meeting of the month from 5 p.m. to earlier in the afternoon to avoid extra overtime.
Mayor John Borrowman said while there might be an increased cost in overtime, he would prefer to keep the business meetings in the evening to make them accessible to the public.
“If we move forward with the schedule as proposed there will be an effect and administration would see increased staff costs,” he said.
He said that when he, along with the CAO and senior administration, set the agenda for the meetings, he would prefer to schedule items that take up more staff time at the beginning of the meeting instead.
As well, Borrowman said a flexible schedule allows staff to come in later, if they know they will be at council in the evening.
Council voted unanimously to keep the status quo of its meeting schedule.
Councillor Joanna McCallum asked administration to track the added staff time cost and report back at the next organizational meeting.
