Moose Jaw City Hall is what some would call old school.
Documents such as payroll, work orders and inventory are being completed on hand written recipe cards, and the lack of digital assistance is costing both time and money.
When Mayor Fraser Tolmie was elected, residents told him they wanted change, and they’ll be getting it as the modernization process begins in hopes of saving tax payer money.
“We’ve got to take city hall, our city from the 1970’s to 2017,” Tolmie said.
City Manager Matt Noble says one issue with the recipe cards is the range in penmanship, and another is the fact that without a digital system each employee can interpret organization techniques differently.
“When it’s a manual system, everybody interprets it differently and that’s where mistakes start to happen,” Noble added.
Time management will also change once city hall is fully modernized. The hope is that internal programs such as excel sheets and e-mails will be fully utilized.
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Noble added, some tasks that an email could resolve in minutes are still taking a full work day to complete.
“I’ll give you an example, we send someone from our public works department to hop in the vehicle and drive about a kilometer and a half to city hall and then run upstairs and try to locate an individual and get somebody to sign a document.”
Employees are having to budget not only time for travel but also for additional research.
Mayor Tolmie, who took office eight months ago, is unimpressed with the current system.
“You inherit all the challenges and all the opportunities when you take office, so for me this is an opportunity to make our city hall better.”
He added, “Some of our records are outdated and we’re trying to find out where shut off valves are because our record keeping hasn’t been kept up to date.”
Noble admits retired employees are being called back to help locate as-builts such as water and sewer lines.
“It would give us a hint and then we could go a do a little bit of camera work and we can pretty much surmise the services and where they’re located,” Noble noted.
Inefficiencies have been costing taxpayers’ money but the goal once modernized is to save.
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Tolmie says he would like to run the city as a business and that they have allocated funds within the budget for the modernization.
He added that due to provincial cuts, much of the budget took a hit and taxes were increased 6.25 per cent as a result.
However, part of a 1.03 per cent chunk of that budget is being used to “keep things going,” he said and will go towards these modernization efforts.
The city says that fully integrating the new digital system will take at least two years.
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