HUMBOLDT — Maintenance service levels for city streets, buildings, underground infrastructure and parks will remain the same.
At its meeting on April 27, Humboldt council was asked if they wanted to keep maintenance levels the same or look at reductions in the face of the pandemic.
Joe Day, Humboldt’s administrator, told council that he’s held off hiring for many of the city’s seasonal positions. He said council’s feelings on maintenance levels would in turn affect the impact of COVID-19 on the city’s budget.
“Once we get the confirmation we want to maintain levels of service in many of these areas we’ll resolve some of the staffing shortages that we have to proceed,” he said.
The recommendation to council was to keep maintenance levels the same as planned in the 2020 city budget.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is not having an immediate, substantial, negative impact on the financial position of the city,” a memo to council said.
The memo said that while the city has lost revenue from cancelled bookings and registrations, there have also been savings from reduced staffing and utility costs.
Council voted in favour of the recommendation.
“I agree that if we can financially afford it that we should keep as much as our maintenance on our services as we possibly can,” Councillor Sandy Weyland said.
Councillor Roger Nordick said he was concerned making cuts to save money on maintenance now would result in higher repair costs in the future.
“There certainly will be public dissatisfaction if we discontinue a lot of the components of the programs so I'm in favor of maintaining this as much as possible,” he said.
Rob Muench, Humboldt’s mayor, encouraged the city to use the staff it has before hiring any seasonal workers.
“I will leave it up to administration for staffing, whether there's existing staff that can be utilized in some of those areas that are currently laid off or currently not really busy that we can maybe move,” he said, “around before we start hiring extra people.”
The city released job postings for eight maintenance-focused seasonal positions on April 29.
