An initiative to increase payments made to City of Powell River long-term staff members who are leaving city employment or retiring has been put on hold.
At the February 6 council meeting, councillor Jim Palm put forward a recommendation that staff be directed to bring options to council regarding revisions to council policy 48 (individuals leaving municipal employment). Palm said he brought the matter forward because it was brought to his attention that the policy refers to long-term employees. He said the policy states that anyone having served 10 to 15 years receives $100, from 15 to 30 years, they receive $200, and for more than 30 years, they receive $300.
“This policy came forward more than 25 years ago,” said Palm. “It needs to be revisited. I believe staff have this in the works to bring policy updates forward. I’d like to ask staff if they are planning to upgrade this policy and bring it to council in the near future.”
Chief administrative officer Lisa Bhopalsingh said it wasn’t on staff’s list, but if it’s council’s direction, staff can be directed to deal with the policy.
Palm said if council was to make specific changes to policy 48, he would like to ask for a report from staff to upgrade remuneration for long-term employees and bring it forward for further consideration.
Councillor Cindy Elliott said she had no objection to reviewing old, out of date policies, and she believes there are a number of them. She said her question to Bhopalsingh was that by picking and choosing which policies that should be brought forward ahead of some others, would that leave council at the risk of prioritizing items in an ad hoc way?
“Is there a plan to look at them all and bring them forward in a prioritized way for updating?” asked Elliott. “We have a tonne that need updating. I’m curious about the proposed process and if we’re getting in staff’s way with this motion.”
Bhopalsingh said with interim corporate officer Stephen Fleming coming on board, the conversation has been held. She said he has already spotted a long list of bylaws and policies that need to be reviewed. In terms of the priority, the variety of policies is quite extensive, so staff would need some direction on what it is that is seen as priorities, she added.
Councillor Rob Southcott said he checked the value of a dollar in 2000 when the policy was amended. He said he was wondering if it was Palm’s intention to update the numbers in the policy to make them consistent with current values.
“If it was that, it would probably take about half an hour or less to amend this policy,” said Southcott. “If that’s what councillor Palm’s intention is, I can’t see that it would take much time.”
Palm said Southcott posed some excellent questions. He said his intent was to make changes as simple as possible. He said, for example, that a two per cent annual increase would make it a 50 per cent increase over the 25 years since the last amendment to the policy.
“The employees who pointed this out would be very happy to see a $100 increase in the three categories and thank council for their fine work,” said Palm.
Fleming said part of what he plans to do is come forward with a review of all the council policies, grouping them by topic.
“Rather than look at things piecemeal, what I propose is staff bringing forward a report on how staff plans to review all the policies, group them by similar kinds of policies in bite-sized chunks, and then council can see them in the context of each other,” said Fleming. “Then, you can prioritize which ones come first. That’s part of the workplan that I propose to be doing.”
Palm said he would leave it to Fleming to review all the policies he thinks need to be done and bring it forward as a report. He said he would withdraw his motion, which passed unanimously.
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