City Proposes 1,300 New Hires, Raising Concern From Several Councillors
Posted March 16, 2009 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Layoffs and buy-out packages? Not at City Hall, where more than 1,000 new positions may soon be up for grabs.
As businesses lay people off in these shaky economic times, the City of Toronto is reportedly hoping to hire about 1,300 people for jobs that range from welfare caseworkers, to capital works projects staff for new projects such as Transit City, to a BlackBerry specialist.
There are also more than 200 TTC jobs connected to expanding service.
The hiring plans aren’t sitting well with several councillors, among them Peter Milczyn and Doug Holyday, who say taxpayers will bear the brunt of the costs of these new hires. Milczyn questioned some of the proposed new positions, particularly some of the administrative ones.
Councillor Shelley Carroll, the city’s budget chief, defended the proposed staff additions and said Torontonians wouldn’t be greatly impacted. She said only 450 of the new workers would be paid for through property taxes.
Holyday said that although the city received $238 million this year from the province, its share of the surplus, that money won’t be around next year because Ontario is now operating on a deficit.
Council votes on the city’s $8.7 billion budget for 2009 between March 31 and April 1.
What jobs are open at City Hall now? Find out here and here.
Photo credit: Michael Talbot, CityNews.ca
