The falling axe continues at Hamilton city hall — city officials are now looking at freezing all employee overtime for non-essential services in another attempt to balance the books.

I'm trying to make it uncomfortable. - Coun. Sam Merulla

City manager Chris Murray will look into whether a freeze on "discretionary overtime" would impact services to taxpayers.

"We're in a comfort zone (of claiming overtime)," said Sam Merulla, Ward 4 councillor, who moved the motion. "I'm trying to make it uncomfortable."

"There's a culture and understanding that overtime is good, and I can assure you it's not."

"Business as usual is off the table."

Council is trying to cut to the bone to avoid steep property tax increases, particularly for homeowners. This week, it eliminated 23 full-time positions — most of them management — and repurposed five of them to be a lower pay grade.

And Murray says more job cuts are likely. The city is going line by line, scrutinizing even office supply contracts. He'll also look at a 2016 report recommending restructuring and as many as 45 job cuts to the Ontario Works office.

The city's goal is a 1.8 per cent increase over last year to the average property tax bill. With this week's job cuts, the budget sits at 2.8 per cent.

But Zachary Nichol, a human resources metrics analyst, told councillors overtime isn't necessarily bad.

It's better for employees to work overtime, he said, than for the city to hire more employees. Overtime is a sign of a department being lean.

"We should be looking at departments with no overtime and saying, 'Why don't we have more overtime?'"

Merulla took issue with that, saying it shows claiming overtime is a systemic problem.

Murray said he'd look into it, and try to get it done for the 2017 budget "without generating overtime."

The motion:

That staff be directed to review the impact of freezing all non-essential overtime and report back to the general issues committee during the 2017 operating budget process.