Irricana CAO Alvin Melton confirmed a number of Irricana Town employees lost their jobs as a result of budget cuts, but refused to tell a group of about 80 residents which positions had been chopped, June 4.
On May 28, facing a substantial mill rate increase, council directed administration to cut about $90,000 from the 2012 budget.
Unconfirmed reports began to circulate about job cuts, however, individual councillors were unable to substantiate the rumours, claiming they had not been officially informed of the job cuts.
On May 31, the Irricana Ratepayers Blog reported the head of public works, the accounts payable/accounts receivable clerk and the gardener had been let go, while two office positions had been cut to half time and all other staff would be put on a four-day workweek with every Friday off. Melton later confirmed the Town office would be closed on Fridays beginning June 22.
“We are not going to disclose who lost their jobs at this time,” said Melton during the meeting. “I am not going to say that nobody didn’t lose their jobs, but I am not going to disclose who lost their jobs.”
When Melton was asked by a member of the public if he would disclose what positions have been eliminated, he remarked “You don’t need to know the positions that have been cut.”
Melton told council library funding has been cut by $7,000; $30,000 was cut from ground works; $30,000 from administration; $10,000 from the budget to send council members to the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association fall conference; $8,000 from park maintenance; $8,000 from recreation and $5,000 from economic development for a total of $98,000.
“As far I know, there were no job losses, only time losses,” said Mayor Lisa Constantini.
However, after the meeting, Constantini issued the following statement:
“We made the motion to cut and have administration figure out where. That was done. We as council were provided with where these cuts in programs came from. I did not hear rumours that certain people were let go, so gave only the information I had at that time. Our CAO did exactly what his council asked of him. I gave council the opportunity to decide where they would like to see cuts and they chose to let the CAO accomplish this. Cut backs are sometimes a very hard decision but it was made and now we need to move on.”
On June 5, she confirmed by email that a “maintenance 1 and administrative assistant 2 and one part-time seasonal positions had been cut.”
Deputy Mayor Andrew Carr expressed frustration about the situation, saying, “During the last few days, I had gotten very little information from staff or the mayor.”
“You asked me if you could release the information you did have to the public,” replied Constantini.
“I am not your babysitter. You don’t need me to tell you if you can release information to the public.”
