A proposed residency policy is headed to executive committee for further debate after questions were raised about which City employees would be affected.
Council was supposed to vote on the proposal at Monday’s meeting, but instead voted 7-2 to send the matter back to executive committee at the request of Coun. Blake Edwards.
Edwards said there are still some questions about which employees would have to follow the policy, and those questions are best handled at the executive committee level.
“There is new information that it is going to impact more employees that are out-of-scope than was initially reported,” Edwards explained during the meeting. “That’s why I moved (the amendment). It’s as simple as that.”
While not all councillors plan to vote in favour of the policy, some of those who did said they had no problem delaying the vote.
Coun. Don Cody originally moved to accept the policy as presented. However, he also said there’s nothing wrong with councillors getting as much information as possible before making a decision.
“I certainly agree with the policy, but I also agree with the amendment,” Cody explained. “After all, if there are councillors who believe they need more information, or want to get more information, why not? The more information you get, the better the policy will be because that’s when you can go and get behind it more.”
Mayor Greg Dionne and Coun. Charlene Miller both voted against sending the policy to the executive committee. Dionne said there should be no concerns about making employees move to PA, since they’re already paid a good salary to work here.
“The people we are talking about are in the top 10 per cent of income earners in the province of Saskatchewan,” Dionne said during the meeting. “I think that’s an important thing to discuss because that tells you how well we pay our employees.”
Couns. Tony and Head and Terra Lennox-Zepp both voted in favour of Edwards’ amendment, but said they likely wouldn’t support the policy.
Head told council the government already has no place in the bedrooms of the nation, and should also have no say in where those bedrooms are located, even if they belong to City employees. He also worried it would discriminate against City employees who live on reserve.
Lennox-Zepp reiterated concerns she’d made previously that many municipalities already had a hard time finding qualified people to fill important roles, and the new residency policy would make it even harder.
The next executive committee meeting is scheduled for Apr. 19.
