The city likely won’t add another municipal enforcement officer to its roster to accommodate new provincial legislation that’s expected to leave senior management knee-deep in paperwork.
City manager Bill Holtby informed council Tuesday night the city has been put into a “difficult situation” as a result of some decisions made by the solicitor general.
Beginning in 2010, provincial regulation will require St. Albert’s senior municipal enforcement officer to review every ticket written by his eight peace officers.
In order to do that, Holtby said the city would essentially have to pull that officer off the street to tackle the extra paperwork.
“Essentially we need an additional officer,” said Holtby. “This is not an initiative we’ve come forward with. It’s one that we’ve responded to as a result of the regulation by the solicitor general.”
During budget deliberations Tuesday night, the majority of council decided to remove the funded position from the proposed budget.
“Given the state of the economy, now is not the time to fund this,” said Coun. Roger Lemieux.
In 2008, the total number of tickets issued by municipal enforcement officers was more than 3,600.
As of Sept. 30, more than 3,900 tickets had been issued this year, leaving the city forecasting about 5,000 tickets to be issued by the end of the year.
Due to the increase in tickets, Coun. Lorie Garritty thought the position should be funded this year and was not supportive of removing it from the budget.
“We can’t take enforcement people off the street and have them do paperwork,” said Garritty, who questioned what other jurisdictions are doing to comply with the new regulations. “This is forced upon us in a sense. The requirement by the solicitor general is not going away.”
According to Chris Jardine, general manager of community and protective services, some municipalities have already hired additional staff to pick up the workload while others are choosing to reduce service and simply absorb the impact.
Jardine expects the additional work to eat up about 50 per cent of the senior supervisor’s time.
“There is no hard and fast,” said Jardine. “We are not required to hire an individual, but the only way we can provide that service is to hire a resource to do that.”
The new provincial regulations were imposed to tighten up the quality of work in certain jurisdictions.
