In a report before Saskatoon’s next special budget meeting, city administration is warning councillors that a hiring freeze could have an “unpredictable impact” on services.
Councillors meet on Tuesday to plan the next multi-year budget and discuss a group of reports from administration outlining potential cuts and savings to address a shortfall of more than $70 million in the next two years.
Without intervention, Saskatoon residents would face a 17.33 per cent tax increase next year, according to Clae Hack, the city’s chief financial officer.
On June 14, councillors asked administration to report on the potential impact of a hiring freeze on all tax-funded full time staff position between 2023 and 2025.
The report, written by City Manager Jeff Jorgenson, says administration estimates it would need over 70 additional staff across all tax-funded departments in 2024-25 to maintain services, accounting for population growth and city expansion.
Jorgenson says the city could save an estimated $5.5 million by not hiring those workers in 2024-25, but the move would spread the current work force thin.
“For example, the parks division has requested 1.52 and 1.84 additional FTEs in 2024 and 2025 to mow and maintain the estimated 35.85 hectares of park and green space that is expected to be added to their inventory over the next two years. Not adding these staff would require parks to utilize existing staff to travel to and care for these new areas, which would reduce the time they have available to care for and maintain existing parks,” Jorgenson writes.
“Not adding staff incrementally as the city grows would put incremental pressure on the city’s ability to meet service levels.”
By leaving vacancies unfilled and freezing all new hires, Jorgenson estimates the city could save $1.4 million in 2023, $12.9 million in 2024, and $26.4 million in 2025, assuming a hiring freeze also means the city does not contract out its services or rely on overtime.
The vacancies that open as people retire and move to other positions are out of the city’s control, says Jorgenson.
“Overall, this approach would have an unpredictable impact on service. Where and when vacancies occur would not be equally distributed and where the actual vacancies occur will be a critical factor on the ultimate impact on a service.”
Many city positions have specific skill sets that aren’t easily backfilled, and different departments have different attrition rates, Jorgenson says.
Administration assumes about one in 20 people vacate their positions in a given year, and that a hiring freeze would result in an estimated 12 per cent reduction of the city’s work force by the end of 2025.
Jorgenson says for the Saskatoon Fire Department, this would mean implementing rotating fire station closures, with the next nearest station responding to calls in the area while that station is closed.
This would likely put the fire department well below the national standard response time for calls, about four minutes travel time for the first-arriving truck.
He says the Saskatoon Fire Department is currently only meeting this standard 61 per cent of the time, which decreased from 72 per cent in the last eight years.
“The Administration believes that a hiring freeze approach, where staff resigning or retiring are unilaterally not backfilled … would lead to unpredictable public service and constantly changing conditions which would require ongoing resources to re-balance workloads and communicate service updates to the public,” Jorgenson writes.
Jorgenson says administration believes they can work with city council to implement cost reductions in a more intentional way.
Councillors will discuss the report, and a number of other potential cost-saving measures, on Tuesday morning.
