The nine-member City of Prince George management team was paid between $178.70 and $235.72 per hour in overtime wages during last summer's Cariboo wildfires, a Freedom of Information request has revealed.
The total overtime bill sent to the provincial government for senior city staff was $111,231.90 in overtime fees for their combined 583.25 hours of work managing the city's Emergency Operations Centre to accommodate the evacuees. As a result of the city's overtime policy for exempt employees adopted in 2011, they were all paid at double their regular hourly rate for overtime.
City manager Kathleen Soltis took in $16,500.40 for 70 hours of overtime at an hourly rate of $235.72 to lead the city's response to the influx of more than 10,000 evacuees that came into Prince George between July 8 and Sept. 16. She also contributed 113.5 hours in the effort at her regular hourly rate at the time of $117.86 per hour.
Rob Whitwam, the city's general manager of community services, led the management team with $20,988.75 in overtime earnings. Whitwam was the only member of senior staff to not give his consent to have the number of overtime hours he worked revealed to The Citizen as part of its information request. The other three general managers at the city all earned the same overtime rate of $193 per hour, so if Whitwam was also paid that rate, he would have claimed 108.75 hours in overtime. The number of regular hours he contributed to the evacuee effort was redacted from the city information.
The overtime hours, pay, and regular hours put in by the other seven members of the city's management team towards the emergency are:
Gina Layte Liston, director of public works - 105.5 hours of overtime at $178.70/hr = $18,852.85 in OT, plus 163 regular time hours.
Rob van Adrichem, director of external relations - 87.5 hours of overtime at $178.70/hr = $15,636.25 in OT, plus 94 regular time hours.
Rae-Ann Emery, director of human resources - 85.5 hours of overtime at $178.70/hr = $15,278.85, plus 3.65 regular hours.
Dave Dyer, general manager of engineering and public works - 41.5 hours of overtime at $193/hr = 8,009.50, plus 33 regular time hours.
Ian Wells, general manager of planning and development - 37 hours of overtime at $193/hr = $7,141, plus 74.5 regular time hours.
Kris Dalio, director of finance - 24 hours of overtime at $178.70/hr = $4,288.80, plus 7.5 regular time hours.
Walter Babicz, general manager of administrative services - 23.5 hours of overtime at $193/hr = $4,535.50, plus 11.25 regular time hours.
All of the City of Prince George's labour costs - both regular time and overtime - to assist the evacuees during the 70-day crisis was billed to Emergency Management B.C., the provincial government agency that reimburses local governments to coordinate offering food, clothing, shelter and other necessities during disastrous events, such as flooding and wildfires.
The city's total labour bill to EMBC was $2.34 million to pay more than 500 city employees, including 396 unionized workers who were paid both regular time and overtime rates in accordance with their collective bargaining agreements, the city's senior communications officer Michael Kellett said in an email.
The city employee who received the most in overtime wages during the evacuation brought in $42,034.84 for 354.25 hours paid at time-and-a-half and another 70.5 hours at double time, on top of 182 hours of straight time.
Another employee took in $31,947.38 in overtime wages for 336 hours paid at time-and-a-half and 72 hours at double time, on top of 243.5 hours of straight time.
The names of these individuals or what their roles were as part of the emergency response were not revealed in the release of information to The Citizen.
The data as a whole demonstrates the tens of thousands of hours city employees worked while on the clock, alongside the army of volunteers, to respond to the wave of Cariboo evacuees who flooded into the city in a short amount of time. These folks arrived in Prince George under extreme stress, bringing with them livestock, pets, children, health issues and other challenges that made taking them in more difficult.
There's no question Prince George could not have provided anywhere near the level of assistance required for the evacuees without the work of paid city employees and their expertise, some of whom cancelled holidays to help out. During an unprecedented disaster with no clear action plan, senior city staff rallied to do what was necessary.
Yet the overtime wages paid to those individuals, on top of more than a dozen other city employees who were paid $100 or more per hour in overtime, can't sit well with the community volunteers. The city's response to the evacuees wouldn't have been nearly as thorough and effective without those volunteers and the countless hours they put in.
A week after the end of the 2015 Canada Winter Games, Prince George unveiled its new slogan: The Volunteer City - It's In Our Nature.
That spirit came through last summer.
Unfortunately, what also came through were salaried city employees, starting with the team at the top, collecting exorbitant overtime wages to cash in on the crisis.
-- Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
