Big jump in number of city supervisors has mayor calling for job cuts

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Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson says he will push for cuts to supervisory positions after a city audit found hiring for those positions had grown disproportionately over the last three years. The report from auditor David Wiun shows the city added 232 full time positions over three years and is spending $63 million more on salaries than in 2017. Middle management positions increased by 22 per cent, supervisory positions went up by 19 per cent. At the same time, the staff per supervisor ratio decreased from six to one in 2017 to five to one three years later.

The mayor said, the city needs to take action. Clearly the auditor has found that there are more supervisors than we need in this organization. We will have to shed some supervisory positions across the corporation to bring things back into balance. And we'll have to do that sooner rather than later. And I'll be pushing for that at the audit committee and through to the budget this fall.

For example, the city added 70 supervisors and 79 staff within the citizen services department. While staff numbers went down by 210 in city operations, the department added 95 higher paid supervisors. Staffing within integrated infrastructure services increased by 74 supervisors and 47 staff.

The report said, since 2017, the workforce has grown each year and supervisory FTE (full-time equivalents) have grown disproportionately high compared to non-supervisory FTE. Reversing this growth by reducing supervisory FTE is an effective way to reduce costs for the organization.

Interim city manager Adam Laughlin said administration welcomes the auditor's findings. A global pandemic, low energy prices and economic instability have all had an impact on our organization. Our new reality requires a new orientation to our work. We need to make intelligent, but sometimes difficult, choices to respond to the challenges that we are facing. The city is a large and complex organization and any changes will be made in a thoughtful way.

City councillors are expected to discuss the report when the audit committee meets on Sept. 18.