Saugeen Shores Council has approved a new organizational structure for the town.
Mayor, Luke Charbonneau, says it will better position the Town for growth, while reducing the number of departments from six to four.
“We’ve combined our Operating Departments together, and we’ve created a department that is focused on development. We've also gone further to combine some of the more procedural elements of the municipality, whether that’s finance, the clerk's department, into a single department.”
Charbonneau adds it will take approximately two years to roll out the new structure, creating new jobs within the municipality.
“As we add more people to the community, we need to be able to serve those people and we need to enhance the existing services we provide. That just means you need more employees to do that work over time.”
Charbonneau adds while the overall plans for restructuring have been approved by council, nothing can move ahead until it’s approved during the 2022 Budget deliberations.
“We’ve given staff some direction to include some funding in the 2022 Budget, but of course that funding isn’t approved until the budget is finally approved. We’ll look at that funding in the context of the overall budget and see how much of it we can fund and get a better sense of exactly what that funding will do.”
Charbonneau says overall, the restructuring aims to improve three areas: organizational modernization, establishment of key performance indicators, and financial improvement.
The full Municipal Service Delivery Review report, including the new structure, can be found on the Town’s website.