Sudbury city councillor asking for review of municipal services

A Sudbury city councillor is calling for a review of all municipal services.

The motion is on the agenda for the April 9 city council meeting, tabled by ward 8 councillor, Al Sizer.

Sizer is asking that all municipal services currently offered by the city be reviewed for the upcoming year. 

The review would look at which services are legislated and mandated, rate the importance of each service and identify services that could possibly be discontinued.

Sizer says a review of all services could help with the 2020 municipal budget, as the city attempts to find balance between maintaining current service levels and keeping property taxes at acceptable levels.

"We need objective evaluation to see whether there are services that we should be providing, that we can continue to provide," said Sizer.

Certain services are mandatory, such as fire, police and paramedic and would not be affected, however, some other services that are provided are maybe more wants than actual needs, he said.

"We have to either find a way to bring in more revenues or find a way to reduce our costs. Reducing some of our costs could mean getting out of some of our public businesses," Sizer said.

"We know the condition of our roads, we know the condition of our water pipes and sewer lines, those are things we have to maintain and we're getting to a very very tight situation," he said.

Sizer says council and city staff have looked at ways of maintaining the service levels, but he believes that the city can't continue to offer all the services it does without making changes - raising property taxes, finding more revenue or getting out of some services.

"What we're going down now is a road where in a number of years we will be in a crisis situation and time will decide whether we should be in some businesses or not."