Cunningham's quest; some workers for the managers to manage!

Councillor Cunningham had
questions for the City Manager
on the topic of Civic employment
at Monday's council session

Civic employment became the focus of some discussion at Monday evening's Council session for a few moments as Councillor Barry Cunningham took advantage of the time allowed for Council member contributions to ask City Manager Robert Long about some recent hiring down at the City offices.

Perhaps the Councillor had wandered through our archive page of recent employment opportunities with the City, which does seem to showcase a definitive surge in employment at the managerial ranks, part of the city's ongoing hiring process related to the Planning for Major Projects initiative.

However, when it comes to adding to the civic employment rolls, Councillor Cunningham would seemingly like to see less attention to those managerial ranks and a bit more dedication towards adding additional bodies to the ranks of those that do the work on the ground.

Noting that in recent weeks he has seen civic workers directed to a number of projects in a number areas of the city and just wants to make sure that the managers have someone to manage.

"I see our crews reacting to emergency things like Third and McBride there late Friday afternoon, having to be pulled off other projects and things like that and I know they're working and doing a phenomenal job, they're down at Seal Cove, they're all over town right now, we've seen the results and I just want to make sure that they're going to be getting help too and not just people telling them what to do " -- Councillor Barry Cunningham seeking some background on the city's staffing planning 

On the theme of the civic work force, the City Manager outlined for Council that they are currently engaged in a new approach to managing the public works department, though he didn't expand very much on how that direction has change from previous years, or what the reaction to the changes has been from the city's work force.

"Clearly, we are implementing a new approach to how we're doing things down at Public Works and I think it's going very well , we've got a couple of new positions, we recognize that two management people can't handle fifty people reporting to them, so we're redoing that, but everyone is working, however you define work, everyone is working"   

More on Councillor Cunningham's questions and Mr. Long's replies can be found on our Council Timeline feature here.

You can sit in on the exchanges between Councillor Cunningham and the City Manager from the City's Video Archive, it starts at the 44 minute mark.




For more items related to City Council discussions see our archive page here.

Cross posted from the North Coast Review