The Board of Health wants a 1.5 per cent budget bump to fight bedbugs, and for the city manager to scrap a hiring slowdown that is diminishing public health services.
The new board voted to add $500,000 for the bedbug fight to the 2011 budget request recommended by Dr. David McKeown, the medical officer of health.
Councillor John Filion, re-elected Thursday as health board chair, denied he’s tossing a wrench in Mayor Rob Ford’s mission to freeze city spending and property taxes.
He noted that existing agreements should see the province match city dollars three-to-one. “Mayor Ford, I think, has indicated that he wants to solve the bedbug problem, and we’re offering him a way to do it at 25 cents on the dollar,” Filion said.
McKeown said the bedbug money, if approved by the budget committee and later council, and augmented by $1.5 million from the province, would let his department make a serious dent in a surge in infestations that is driving people away from their homes.
Public health currently has initiatives to prevent and respond to infestations, but no dedicated budget. Ontario has so far ignored Toronto’s request for $2.8 million for a multi-pronged attack on the biting insects.
Public health is now asking for an overall $660,900 increase in city funding. Before the bedbug motion from Councillor Paula Fletcher, the hike would have amounted to 0.4 per cent.
Much of Thursday’s meeting was spent discussing what came as a revelation to board members — that city manager Joe Pennachetti in late 2009 ordered a cross-departmental hiring slowdown that forces McKeown to make a “business case” for replacing every staff member who leaves.
That meant leaving the equivalent of 70 full-time positions unfilled in 2010. That saved Toronto $870,000 but meant diminishing services, McKeown said. Jobs sometimes remain vacant for months, he added.
“I am concerned that it takes time to fill positions that are delivering important public health services, that under normal circumstances we would fill quickly and get those people out in the community providing services,” McKeown said.
He couldn’t say which positions are currently vacant, but said it could mean some restaurants are not being inspected and some families not visited by public health nurses. The board asked him to provide a list of affected jobs.
Filion noted the affected positions were approved by council and are in the budget, so any savings go to the surplus.
“I think it’s questionably not legal under provincial legislation to have a city bureaucrat decide how vacancies are filled in public health,” he said, calling it a “very dangerous practice.”
Councillor Gord Perks, another board member, said the decrease in important services punctures Ford’s mantra that “We don’t need to collect taxes and it’s all just a whole bunch of waste and gravy out there.”
“It’s nonsense — there is not waste and gravy in Toronto public health.”
But the slowdown began while Pennachetti was reporting to then-mayor David Miller, whom Perks supported and who touted big budget surpluses as proof of his council’s fiscal responsibility.
Pennachetti declined to comment, saying he’ll address the concerns at Monday’s budget launch.
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