Sparks fly over move to hire more councillor assistants in Richmond Hill

Beros asked to retract ‘insulting’ comment

Yorkregion.com
Feb. 13, 2015
By Kim Zarzour

Sparks flew in council chambers this week as councillors debated again whether they should each have their own office assistants.

An attempt by Ward 1 Councillor Greg Beros to add an item to the town budget so that he, and the other five local councillors, could hire their own administrative assistants was defeated at a budget committee vote Tuesday, but not without heated debate.

Beros, along with Ward 2 Councillor Tom Muench and Ward 3’s Castro Liu, voted in favour of asking staff for a “budget model” that would allow for the hiring of an additional four council assistants.

The town’s six local councillors currently share three assistants, but Beros said it is “next to impossible” for a shared assistant to handle the job.

It would be in the best interests of residents to give each councillor his or her own - otherwise residents will get a “reduced service level”, he said.

Liu agreed. Other departments are making similar requests to deal with growing demands, he said, and “we are the people on the front line, dealing with all the residents”.

But a majority of councillors disagreed, saying the town is under pressure to keep taxes low.

Instead, they voted in favour of a staff addition that would add one assistant to allow the two regional councillors to each have their own - they currently share one - and cited increased work levels at the regional level.

Hiring one additional assistant for regional councillors would not require extra office space, Regional Councillor Vito Spatafora said, however, additional office space would be required if assistants were hired for all local councillors.

He referred to a 2013 staff report that hiring an additional four administrative assistants would cost the town between $321,000 and $361,000, plus an additional $213,000 to $431,000 to provide office space.

The issue was a hot topic of debate that year, also, after Beros made a similar motion for hiring personal assistants.

As in previous debates, a majority of councillors argued against the idea.

“The problem is taking all of this on at once, when we have high demand and high need from other departments,” Spatafora said.

It could be more feasible to phase in the new hires over time, he said, “but to do it all at once is overwhelming”.

Regional Councillor Brenda Hogg said all councillors - both regionals and locals - in Markham and Vaughan have their own assistants and in Newmarket the regional councilor has his own, but she said she can’t support hiring several more assistants “on the heels of a vicious [election] campaign based on council being fiscally incompetent and taxpayers being robbed”.

Ward 4 Councillor David West said that at some point it may be necessary to add more assistants, “but when I look at this year’s budget,” he said, “it’s just irresponsible.

“I’d much rather see heightened level of snow removal or parks maintenance or better bylaw enforcement... So many other things that would give better service to our residents than giving us an extra assistant when it’s just not necessary.”

Tempers flared briefly when Beros suggested regional councillors may have it easier than local.

“Someone said to me, before I was elected, ‘it’s great being a regional councillor because when you’re not at the town they think you’re at the region, and when you’re not at the region they think you’re at the town and as long as you send out some literature here and there...”

His fellow councillors responded with anger, saying the statement was inappropriate and “insulting”.

They asked Beros to apologize or retract the statement, but Beros said he stands by what he said.

A final decision is expected to go to full council in early March.