Sudbury council wraps up project to find $6M in savings

Sudbury city council and staff say they've found $6 million — but more than half of that money comes by not filling empty job positions.

Brian Bigger fulfilled an election promise by freezing taxes when he became the mayor of Sudbury last year.

He had to pull six million dollars out of city bank accounts to do that — and Project 6 Million or P6M was launched to find savings.

On Tuesday the city's Chief Administrative Officer Kevin Fowke revealed that almost $4 million are being saved through attrition, such as vacancies, retirements and roles deemed redundant.

Fowke said most of the changes will not reduce or affect overall services to the community.

"We're leaner and we're smaller than we were even six months ago. And as management, we will have to monitor the impact on workloads. Load balancing and realistic achievable goal setting."

Bigger wouldn't comment on the number of jobs affected by attrition, but he did say there is more work ahead.

"It's gratifying that we're able to find the $6 million, but there are a number of recommendations and suggestions that we'll continue to work on in the coming years."

Staff received more than 800 suggestions on how to save money for Project 6 Million.

It's expected those ideas will be revisited when the city needs to look for more ways to scale back.