The Regional District of Central Kootenay (RDCK) has created two new permanent management positions at a cost of more than $165,000 per year and several summer positions that will cost about $66,000, according to a document prepared by management staff for the RDCK board at its Dec. 12 meeting.
It is also contemplating a third new position, a communications adminstrator, still to be board-approved.
One of the new positions will provide resource recovery technical support to report to the Resource Recovery Operations Supervisor at a cost of $80,350 for salary and benefits.
Resource recovery means garbage and recycling. The RDCK runs 15 landfills and transfer stations employing about 35 people and will be implementing a new recycling program in the near future that will add additional sites and employees.
The regional district will also be hiring a purchasing agent.
“The RD makes purchases of $25 million annually,” the document states. “These purchases are made by individuals within each department, without co-ordination of the function and can run from small office supplies to large capital items such as fire trucks.”
The purchasing agent’s salary will be $80,000 plus benefits for a total of $104,000.
In addition to approving those two positions the RDCK approved the hiring of a number of temporary summer staff: a corporate administration summer student, a geographic information systems summer student, four project site inspectors and two junior operators for environmental services, and two water operator technicians.
Part of those salaries will be paid by student grants, and the remaining cost to the RDCK is expected to be $66,921.
The RDCK is also considering hiring a full-time marketing and communications administrator to assist its communications co-ordinator at a salary of $72,116 including benefits “plus $13,000 for shared administrative/information technology costs.”
The purpose of the position, according to the document, would be “to provide marketing and communications support for the Community Services Department, in particular RDCK managed regional parks and recreation services.”
This position was not approved at the Dec. 12 meeting and was put off to a meeting in March.
Detailed rationales for all of these positions can be found starting at page 285 at https://tinyurl.com/s8pfzuq in the agenda package for the Dec. 12 board meeting.
According to its 2018 Statement of Financial Information, the RDCK had 11 employees with salaries over $100,000 per year and those employees were paid for extra expenses ranging from $1,600 to $23,000 per employee.
The RDCK’s total 2018 salary budget was $13.5 million plus another $2.6 million in employee benefits.
The RDCK provides bylaw enforcement, building inspection, regional parks, planning, emergency management, community services, waste management, recreation programs and infrastructure, water management and fire services in the rural area that surrounds Nelson, Slocan, Creston, Nakusp, Castlegar, New Denver, Salmo, Silverton and Kaslo, and it provides some of those services within a number of those municipalities as well.
bill.metcalfe@nelsonstar.com
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