City of Saskatoon looking to hire position to deal with parking complaints

If you like dealing with frustrated people, the City of Saskatoon may have the job for you.

The city is proposing a new year-round customer support co-ordinator position, and will ask councillors for approval during budget 2019 discussions.

According to documents, the customer support co-ordinator will be tasked with responding to customer inquiries and complaints as well as reviewing and updating policies, regulations, and bylaws.

“There are constant and ongoing issues to do with parking, and we want to provide a clean, consistent, and clear response to citizens when they have concerns,” Mayor Charlie Clark said Monday.

A report at the city’s governance and priorities committee meeting on Monday showed parking services experiences a “large volume of customer
complaints and negative interactions with citizens.”

The city claims it received 7,046 complaint and inquiry calls in 2017; that number doesn’t include calls on the  Way-To-Park app. The city currently has staff from other departments stepping in on the parking service line, and the new position is expected to help reduce the reliance on other staff, as well as the unpaid overtime from staff to keep up day-to-day operations.

“Some of our parking staff are getting overwhelmed when they’re trying to deal with concerns from parking,” Clark said.

The $80,000 per year position would be completely funded by revenues generated from parking, which was $11 million last year.

Councillors voiced their support for the position during initial discussions on Monday, but the position still needs to be debated and approved in budget deliberations in November.