Unionized workers with the City of Victoria hope a long-delayed organizational review — expected to point to hundreds of thousands of dollars in operational efficiencies — won’t also mean layoffs.

Begun in October at a cost of $75,000, the “service delivery and organizational review” was conducted by Maximus Canada. It was supposed to be finished months ago in time for council’s budget deliberations.

article continues below

After delays — primarily because the consultant was said to be having difficulty in finding accurate comparable costs with other municipalities — council expects to have the review within the next two weeks.

Councillors are reluctant to speculate on whether the review could lead to layoffs, though they are expecting to receive the report in-camera because of potential staffing implications.

Layoffs are “absolutely” a concern, said John Burrows, president of CUPE Local 50, which represents about 700 city workers.

“My view of core reviews is that they’re designed to not have public-sector workers delivering public-sector services,” Burrows said.

Similar reviews undertaken throughout the province seem to focus on the delivery of recreation services, he said.

“I don’t know how you can deliver the services we do any cheaper in the private sector than we already do in the public sector — certainly not delivering the quality of it.”

But Burrows says there has been a lot of talk about the condition of geriatric city-owned sports facilities such as Crystal Pool and Royal Athletic Park, where changes or closure could affect hundreds of CUPE workers.

The organizational review comes as Victoria struggles to limit property tax increases to 3.25 per cent a year until 2015. That target was set in 2012 and required about $6 million in budget cuts.

Council has approved a budget for 2013 and is considering a variety of options ranging from partial automation of parkades to limiting police increases over the next two years.

Victoria Coun. Lisa Helps said she wasn’t sure budget efficiencies could be found without layoffs. But, she said, the city is not in the business of employing people.

“We’re in the business of delivering quality services to our residents and we need to find the best ways to deliver those,” Helps said. “The current way we deliver services and the number of services we deliver isn’t sustainable.”

Coun. Shellie Gudgeon said any recommendations in the report won’t necessarily mean layoffs.

“In any organization of our size, efficiencies can be found,” Gudgeon said.

“I think our staff work very hard. But I think we can empower them and I think there are duplications taking place, as in any organization.”

At Helps’s urging, council last April unanimously approved moving to a three-year budget cycle. While the 2013 budget has been set, budget discussions for the coming two years were put on hold pending the organizational review.

Now that it’s complete, Helps said, she is “hell-bent and determined” to finish budgeting through 2015 by the end of September.

“Great, we’ve got the review. Let’s finish the budget. Let’s finish the budget for 2014 and 2015 as we committed to doing,” she said.

“And then, come January, we won’t, yet again, do this budget dance. We’ll actually be focusing on getting some things delivered.”

bcleverley@timescolonist.com