The Town of The Blue Mountains is looking into cutting back on various committee meetings through 2022, to help realize savings in the 2022 budget.
TBM staff spent 2,340 hours working on 194 meetings held by committees of council between January and September 2021.
The 18 committees of council meet on a recurring basis to provide direction to council on a wide variety of issues.
Speaking at budget deliberations Dec. 8, CAO Shawn Everitt stated that ending committee meetings by June 2022 could result in "significant cost savings for the overall 2022 budget."
"I'm sure that there are committee members that aren't going to be favourable to this ... because of the great work that they're doing," he said. "But looking at that alternative schedule, [there would be] probably in the neighbourhood ... of $70k - $80k savings in 2022.
While staff did not provide hard numbers for savings in the 2022 budget, councillor Andrea Matrosovs said that the staff hours spent on meetings have direct implications on the budget.
"The 2,340 hours of committee hours staff are spending, ... that's 58 and a half 40 hour weeks or ... 292 and a half eight hour days, so there is there is a direct connection to the budget," she said.
Council also discussed whether its committees should operate during the 2022 election cycle.
"I think it would be unwise for the council to put those committees in that awkward position during an election period," said councillor Rob Sampson.
"We need to figure out practically whether it's wise to have committees continue to function during the election period, and if not then that's a certain direction to staff to work with the committees to prepare to stand down. I think that then provides at least a half a year of [administration] expenses that can show up on a budget savings line."
CAO Everitt also discussed the potential for committees to move to a condensed schedule, which would increase efficiency for town staff.
"We did send out an inquiry to the committees ... taking a look at whether there was an appetite to go to a stacked meeting calendar, which would allow the bunching of committees together," he said. "From a staff efficiency perspective, what we found was it's an awful lot easier to put the administrative assistant time into one day, as opposed to spreading it out over a number of days getting an agenda sent out that sort of thing."
Council moved to direct staff to begin working with committees to prepare them to stand down by June 30, 2022, with exceptions made for the Police Services Board, the Fence Viewer Committee, the Committee of Adjustment, and the Abandoned Orchard Committee.
