Editor:

With the municipal election behind us, the idea of contracting out existing services will start to emerge at council meetings. Moving from having the responsibility of full-time employees to a single priced contractor seems to be the latest way of controlling costs.

There are two ways a contract bidder can win a contract. One is to become a better manager then the predecessor (the municipality). This may mean searching for innovative ways of doing the same job, possibly with better tools or a better scheduling system. Bravo for that contractor.

The other way of being more competitive is not by improving your productivity, but by simply paying your new employees less money for the same work. The winning bidder needs to figure out the current cost for the work in question, assume a 10 per cent salary reduction in what they pay their workers and then actually pay them 20 per cent less to reap their profit. This is pretty simple and something that the municipality could have done originally, had they not had a previous fair wage practice in place. No bravo for that contractor.

But contracting out services can be a bigger problem for a municipality than for a provincial or federal employer. The bigger problem is that these employees are your neighbours. They shop in your stores, live on your street, go to local events in droves, pay taxes, buy the houses in your city or area and actually care about the place they live. Because they are municipal workers, they are likely paid enough to skip a second job and still have time to volunteer within the community. They really care about where they live and work, they feel a part of it, and are eager to suggest ways of making their jobs more cost effective. They are in it for the long haul and not for short term tax savings.

So if you are a councillor and you are thinking about contracting out some of your employees' work, make sure you don't cause one of our greatest assets to be tossed to one side. You may feel you need to be ruthless, but don't be simply short-sighted. Poorly managed contracting can damage or destroy the very thing you are trying to protect - a resilient and successful community.

Robert Hope

Owen Sound