Option 5 – Amended Work Hours

Currently, Bylaw Enforcement Officers work 33.75 hours per week. An increase to 37.5 hours per week would be in line with similar positions within the City and allow Officers to have more time for their duties, leading to more opportunities for proactive enforcement. Any change to a position’s hours of work would need to be agreed to by the Union. This option was also brought to Council during budget deliberations, but was ultimately not approved by Council due to competing demands and financial constraints at the time of budget deliberation.

Option 6 – Status Quo

As discussed, an estimated 53.4 new calls regarding possible bylaw infractions are logged into the 311 system each business day. The existing staff compliment of Officers make every effort to ensure complaints are investigated within appropriate timelines. While there is an excess amount of work in the area, taking time to search out infractions using a proactive method does not offer a guarantee of finding any issues. It may, in fact, take time away from Officers responding to requests already logged in the system, thereby increasing the wait time of those individuals calling with specific complaints. If this option is chosen by Council, Officers will continue proactive enforcement options where possible as well as continuing to conduct blitz enforcement practices as per usual.

Risk Analysis:

The central risk involved in enacting a proactive enforcement regime at this time is the maintenance of the current levels of service. If proactive enforcement requirements were enacted, the queue of service requests would continue to grow resulting in a delayed response to issues logged through the 211/311 service centre. This delay would grow exponentially due to the call/response volumes noted in the discussion area of this report.

Financial Matters:

In order to maintain current service levels in regards to complaints while providing proactive enforcement, additional resources are needed. The annual employment costs for a single additional Enforcement staff is $86,200 when taking into consideration fringe benefits etc. The cost of increasing the daily work hours from 33.75 to 37.5 as discussed above would total $9,578 per Officer annually (including fringe benefits). In this case, additional staff or additional funds for increasing the weekly work hours of existing staff could be considered in order to move forward with an increased proactive enforcement regime.

As discussed above, the initial fit-up cost for any Officer is roughly $5,580 (excluding the vehicle charge). A part-time officer would need to have a full month’s worth of training at a cost of $5,074 (according to the 2020 CUPE Local 543 salary schedule) including