An operational audit by the regional district eliminated positions of service deemed valuable in a citizen survey, but the CAO says the quality of those services will not change. A citizen survey conducted by the Regional District of Okanagan Similkameen showed respondents ranking air quality at 9.2 out of 10 on a scale of important services to them. Last month, the RDOS followed through on a number of recommendations made from an operational audit that included deleting the air quality supervisor position. “Just because we deleted the air quality co-ordinator position we are still participating on the air quality coalition with the Central Okanagan and North Okanagan and there are still staff positions associated with that. Some of the main functions like the wood chipping program and other programs specific to air quality will still be administered by the public works department,” RDOS CAO Bill Newell said of the audit which became a public document last week. Among the six positions deleted last month as recommendations of the operational audit, three were vacant, including the project engineer position, human resources advisor and an accountant position. “We determined we could still provide a service without funding the positions, so we are still looking for other efficiencies as far as partnerships go. I think we are probably as lean as we will get right now,” said Newell.
The net financial impact of the reorganization to the taxpayers of the RDOS is estimated at $470,000 per year. The CAO will continue to review positions within the RDOS to determine if they could be more efficient by pooling staff. Already the engineering services and public works departments were recommended to be merged. Within that department, the manager of engineering position, the vacant project engineer position and the air quality supervisor position were all deleted. A moratorium was placed on funding for new or additional positions throughout the organization. “One of the major recommendations was the consolidation of departments, so we were looking for efficiencies and how we can do things better and that seemed a feasible way of doing that,” said Newell. “We are looking at partnerships and blurring the boundaries with all of our member municipalities.”
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2010 Operational Audit: To view the 2010 Operational Audit, click here.
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