Queens Mayor confused by council decision to contract out crucial staff position

Road work in Liverpool in June 2020. Photo Ed Halverson

A decision not to hire a full time Asset Manager will cost the Region of Queens more in the long run according to Mayor Darlene Norman.

Norman is perplexed why, after council approved the new position at a previous meeting, voted against hiring a full-time manager.

“You need to have this completed to show what our physical assets are, how old they are, the value of them, when we think they’re going to break, where are we going to get the money when they do break, how are we going to replace them, which ones we’re going to replace. [The] federal government dictates you must have this done, every municipality,” said Norman.

She says a formal accounting of assets is needed so Region of Queens can get funding from the Canada Community Building Fund, formally known as the Gas Tax.

Council had hoped to pay for the new full-time Asset Manager position from that fund but discovered that wouldn’t be allowed under the terms of the fund.

“Yes, we could use it to hire an Asset Manager, but they had to be on a contract,” said Norman. “They had to be from another company. They couldn’t be one of our employees.”

Norman says staff looked for other ways to pay for the position and discovered the provincial Municipal Innovation Program would cover 75 percent of that employee’s wages if the Region applied before Friday the 28.

“So, I was completely knocked with a board when half of council defeated the motion,” said Norman.

Council is now left with the choices to go it alone and pay for 100 percent of a full-time Asset Manager salary or hire someone on a contract basis and have a portion covered by the Community Building Fund.

Norman would rather hire a full-time staff member so that person would put roots down in the community and ensure the knowledge they gain stays with the Region in the long term.

“What do you want to hire? Do you want to hire a consultant, or do you want to hire someone that’s going to, full-time, join your workforce?” said Norman. “And how important is succession planning? The difficulty of finding CAOs and treasurers and finance people and succession planning is so very important in government.”

Norman says the Region is feeling the pressure to get this position filled or risk losing out on an important source of funding from the federal government.

The mayor says council will need to decide how to fill this position soon and expects it will return to the table over the next couple of meetings.

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