Chatham-Kent is doing what it can to minimize the impacts that the COVID-19 pandemic has on municipal staff and services.
In an update during Monday night's council meeting, Chief Administrative Officer Don Shropshire estimated that, as of right now, the pandemic will affect around 250 jobs, including layoff notices that have already been issued.
According to Shropshire, the impact on the municipality varies greatly depending on the department.
Areas such as public health, emergency services, communications, economic development and bylaw enforcement have all seen an increase in service demands. In contrast, several municipal services such as museums, arenas, pools and libraries have all been closed due to public health orders.
"We've been adapting on the fly to make sure that we can continue to offer services," said Shropshire. "That's expected to continue over some time. It's also important to recognize that...the activities that we're undertaking, we have to make sure that what we're doing is financially sustainable for the community and municipality. Also... we want to make sure there's an understanding and comfort with council that we are matching our staffing levels with the level of service that council has determined is appropriate."
According to Cathy Hoffman, general manager of corporate services, the hiring of approximately 185-200 summer students has been suspended.
Hoffman said the municipality has been using different strategies to balance the staffing changes, including redeploying staff from impacted departments to other areas.
"Our arena staff, as an example. As our arenas close, employees are being reassigned to sports fields to provide some minimum maintenance service," she explained.
Hoffman added that a number of employees are using their lieu time and vacation days during slower periods as well as using personal leaves of absence.
"In an ideal world we would have as few layoffs as possible or if we are in a layoff situation we would be having an opportunity to redeploy and have employees back to work as soon as possible," said Hoffman. "Depending on how all of the analysis goes and the timing of who's having a shortage compared to who's having a surge, there is a potential for up to 100 more layoffs subject to redeployment needs at the time."
Additionally, the municipality has established several increased employee support initiatives including a self-service portal that includes a list of resources for government leaves, benefits and subsidies. A dedicated hotline has also been set up to answer employee questions. Income protection for three weeks for all employees is being guaranteed as well.
The pandemic has also caused the municipality to reexamine and shift around several strategic planning priorities.
According to Shropshire, this includes the environmental sustainability Climate Action Plan that the municipality was moving forward with. Public meetings that were set to take place over the next few weeks about the action plan have been put on hold.
"[Environmental planner Gabriel Clarke] was planning to go out this spring and doing a number of public consultations to help support our work in environmental sustainability. The nature of that work and the consultation doesn't lend itself very well to the COVID crisis," said Shropshire. "Rather than have difficulty in doing the type of interactions or civic engagement, we've asked Gabriel to help support the Economic Development team in helping understand how we can provide additional support to our local businesses that have been affected by COVID."
Shropshire said administration will be returning to council at a later date with recombinations to service-level changes and what impact they will have from a staffing standpoint.
