Saskatoon auditor to examine city's manager-to-staff ratio

The city's auditor will asses the ratio of full-time employees to supervisors ahead of budget deliberations this fall.

Councillor Cynthia Block formally requested the audit during a meeting of the city's finance committee on Wednesday.

Block's motion comes as the councillors grapple with a $51 million budget shortfall that's projected for next year.

So far, councillors have given their blessing to a series of adjustments floated by city administration that would save more than $20 million, primarily by delaying spending.

However, some business leaders in the city have urged the city to look at staffing costs at the city, particularly at the management level. 

In her motion, Block asked the auditor to examine the staff-to-supervisor ratio at the city and the overall cost of supervisors per full-time position over the next five years.

"We want to be sure as we go through this process that we don't leave any rock unturned. This is not to say in any respect that I don't have a tremendous amount of confidence in the way that our administration is managing the staff," Block said.

"But I think that we could all use a sound refresher of understanding the process by which we are trying to create an efficient and lean city. And I'm hoping that through this motion, the independent office of the city auditor will be able to tell us not only where we stand in terms of our assessing against our own metrics over the last few years, but also how are we comparing to other cities."

The audit request was supported unanimously by the other committee members in attendance, councillors Randy Donauer, David Kirton and Zach Jeffries.

Prior to the committee's vote on the motion, Jefferies emphasized the audit wasn't in response to potential "misinformation" circulating online.

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"We've all seen certain reports or things on social media that have talked about the fact that the city is 'wildly overstaffed' or something like that — [that don't] consider of course, the fact that we run all sorts of services that other cities don't like a power company and like a land company," Jefferies said.

"But the important thing here is that this actually has the ability, especially within current resources, to help either reaffirm that we're on the right track or tell us that we're not and how we can fix it, and both of those things seem like good outcomes to me," Jefferies said.

Kirton said the independent nature of the city auditor Sohail Saleem's office is an important component of the planned dive into the city's staffing levels.

"Mr. Salim and his office are independent of administration. Mr. Salim answers directly to the city council and so I don't want people thinking 'Well, this is just somebody on the inside,'" Kirton said.

Salim's audit is expected to be presented to council in advance of budget deliberations in November.