Calgary parks department overhaul could save city $4M, report says
Increasing user fees for sports field rentals an option, says city
Calgary could save roughly $4 million from its $50-million parks budget, the city's priorities and finance committee was told Tuesday.
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All city departments are having their budgets reviewed to determine what services they provide, at what cost and why.
The parks review found the city could save $3 million a year by increasing efficiency in the department and by contracting out more maintenance work.
It could also generate another $1 million in annual revenue by increasing user fees for city sports fields.
How much those fees would go up remains unknown.
The department plans to bring forward suggestions for council to consider. If approved, the higher rates wouldn't come into effect until 2017.
Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi said the city will need to work with CUPE — the union representing its outside workers — to increase efficiency in the department.
“Certainly the report pointed out that our labour management practices are not best practice,” he said.
“And so I look forward to working with the folks in Local 37 to figure out how to make that happen. And if there are problems with work crews not being efficient, if there are some people making other crews look bad, then I would imagine it’s in the union’s best interest to help us weed that out.”
Nenshi said the report shows the city’s labour costs is comparatively high for a municipal parks department while the costs for maintenance per hectare of parkland are far lower than what other cities spend.
“So it actually leads to an interesting question,” he said. “If we’re paying higher wages, but spending far less, are we actually having an appropriate level of maintenance, or do we actually need to spend more on maintenance?”