The municipal government has eliminated four positions from its workforce.
The City has been working to balance its budget for 2017, after the first draft indicated Lloydminster was facing an operational deficit of $10.5 million. The second draft of the budget, brought forward on Monday, had the deficit down to $594,652.
One of the methods listed was the reduction of operating costs and expenditures by $1.8 million.
The two active positions were held by a financial controller, and a utilities branch manager. The eliminations were not performance-based, but “necessary budget alignments.” Two vacant positions were not filled.
The City believed the recently-eliminated positions to be redundant and, by removing them, were able to find efficiencies in labour costs.
When asked about the possible inclusion of more layoffs in the final version of the municipal budget, Lloydminster mayor Gerald Aalbers indicated that the idea would be discussed in budget planning.
“I would think that council is going to look at a lot of things,” said Aalbers.
“I heard very clearly from voters throughout the election, I think council members that were elected did as well. I’ll be honest, I think everything is on the table because before I take budget back and have to defend it among all the residents of the city of Lloydminster, I want to make sure that we’ve turned up every stone possible to ensure that we’ve been reasonable and fair.”
He also advised residents to “stay tuned” when it came to further reductions, and said he had been aware of the two layoffs in place so far.
“You’ve heard there was a proposal for a tax increase, potential for user fees. Is there going to be some other reductions?” said Aalbers.
“There may be.”
