The issue: city finances
We say: scrutiny warranted
Somewhere in our city there's a very lucky individual with a winning $55-million Lotto Max ticket.
The City of Yellowknife is also hoping to win the lottery.
Like many municipalities across Canada, Yellowknife is bleeding money during the Covid-19 pandemic and it's hoping the federal government will ride to the rescue.
NNSL file photo
Millions of dollars of city revenue is at risk due to the loss of parking fees and user payments to access the dump, the Multiplex, the Fieldhouse and other facilities. That's eroding the $25 million that the city normally hauls in annually from user fees, representing close to one-third of city revenues. City hall's projections are that between $1.9 million to $4.3 million of user fees will be lost this year.
Mayor and council are turning to the territorial Department of Municipal and Community Affairs to relay the urgency to Ottawa, which has already doled out an estimated $250 billion in Covid-19 relief nationwide. 
Meanwhile, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities is appealing for no less than $10-billion worth of emergency funding from the Government of Canada.
If Yellowknife is successful in securing some of that federal cheese, all the more power to us. On the other hand, the funding will likely be granted per capita so it may not amount to all that much.
Going into the Covid crisis, the municipality had done an admirable job of managing the city's finances, producing a $6.7-million surplus in 2019. But that will quickly be forgotten if times get really tough. The decisions mayor and council are making as we emerge from the first wave of the coronavirus will be under scrutiny.
Many cities across Canada have elected to lay off workers, numbering in the hundreds or the thousands. Yellowknife has decided to retain all of its 214 full-time staff. That surely comes as a relief to municipal workers. But if the city is taking the "go slow" approach to reopening facilities and, as senior administrative officer Sheila Bassi-Kellett explained, possibly may not allow some buildings to be publicly accessible because of limitations on the number of users, that's going to increase pressure to justify keeping all hands on deck.
The city has stated its intention to "re-purpose" some workers who have been left with little to do in their regular positions. If money gets tight, a full accounting of the "repurposing" will surely be demanded by ratepayers.
Perhaps some of those city employees can be positioned at roadside on the way to the dump, providing services to people in vehicles backed all the way up to Giant Mine while awaiting their turn to enter the landfill site. The city, which has a long history of angering residents with poor policy at the garbage depot, has chosen to cap dump visitors at 10 at a time. The inevitable byproduct will be waste offloaded along the highway and in secluded areas. Frustrated individuals won't spend an hour waiting to put refuse in its rightful place.
It will also likely serve as an ugly reminder to residents if the city's budget woes get worse that city put staff over services during the height of the pandemic.