Council unanimously supported the creation of a new permanent safety officer position during the Budget 2021 line-by-line reading on Tuesday night.
image sourced from the City of Yellowknife
The position, which comes with an annual salary of $155,100, gives the city two full-time safety officer positions whose roles are to ensure compliance with regulations from the Workers Safety and Compensation Commission, ensure health and safety practices are followed at any given work site and to ensure proper paperwork is filled out regarding safety.
Over the last year, the city has relied on one full-time position and a two-year term position, which was expiring at the end of this year. Workplace safety oversight for in excess of 200 city staff wouldn't be sustainable with just one officer to monitor it, council agreed.
The creation of the position stemmed from a motion made by Coun. Niels Konge, which followed city administration’s direction that this was the number one priority if council was going to allow for a staff addition in the budget.
“There are a lot of new things that have to be done with safety with Covid, and managers otherwise end up doing all that work and it is not what they should be doing," Konge said. "Even if there is no Covid, two safety officers is really not a lot.”
When the city brought forward Budget 2021 proposals this fall, it came with no requests for added staff numbers. However, administration made clear that there have been compounding staffing shortages identified and some positions have been neglected by council in previous years.
“As some councillors may recall, when administration first introduced Budget 2019, it identified a significant staffing gap equivalent of almost 13 full-time positions – a consequence of many years of staffing requirements being buried at the administrative level in anticipation of council’s reluctance to grow the city staff complement,” said Sharolynn Woodward, director of corporate services, during the Oct. 5 governance and priorities committee meeting.
Although the safety officer was the only new hire that council agreed to, the city has identified other shortages that include asset management support, a development and lands officer, a part-time administrative assistant, two full-time emergency dispatchers, an equipment operator and a works maintainer.
On Tuesday, senior administrative officer Sheila Bassi-Kellett described a second safety officer as "an absolutely essential position."
image courtesy of the City of Yellowknife
“We were able to struggle through with one safety officer but frankly she was spread so thin that we didn't get a lot of the work done that needed to get done," said Bassi-Kellett. "So imagine if you will, when Covid hit what was absolutely amazing was that we had one person that focused on core safety initiatives compliance of course with the regulator, but then we had someone (term employee) who was working on all of the safe work practices and all of the different kinds of work contexts that we have staff working within. And boy, there are many.”
Mayor Rebecca Alty said the need for more staff is recognized but some residents may not have an appetite for it given the additional costs.
"Administration would definitely love to have more staff to be able to achieve more projects, but it is up to council to decide whether we want to take on more of these projects or do we want to hold steady and work with what we have with a more modest tax increase," Alty said.