Frontenac County Council - February19

Jeff Green | Feb 26, 2014

Short-term disability (sick time) on the county table

At the request of Council, a monthly report on absenteeism is now being provided, to supplement the quarterly reports that were requested last year.

The report shows the monthly and annual costs for both unionized and non-unionized employees on short-term disability, which ranges from a day off for the flu to a 15-week absence due to an illness or injury.

“The cost of short-term disability is covered directly by the county” said Colleen Hickey, Manager of Human Relations, “whereas long-term disability is covered by an insurance program, and is not part of the reporting that is being presented to Council each month."

The monthly report for January, 2014 includes a breakdown of sick time for 2012 and 2013, and the trends over that two-year period show that while the number of days lost due to illness at Fairmount Home went down in 2013 by a significant margin, they went up for Frontenac Paramedic Services and for the Corporate Services department of the county itself.

Fairmount Home lost 11,500 hours in 2013 in sick days, down from 14,800 in 2012, a drop of 23%.

Frontenac Paramedic Services and Howe Island Ferry Services, which fall under the Emergency and Transportation Department (the statistics from the two operations are combined in the report), lost 21,900 days in sick days in 2013, up from 19,650 in 2012, an 11% increase.

Corporate services is the smallest department in the study, and it saw the largest change, 977 days lost in 2013 as compared to 481 in 2012, a 100% increase in one year. While the corporate services numbers seem extreme, it should be noted that when the numbers of employees are small, the impact of one or two illnesses can have a large statistical impact.

“In general, the absenteeism rates at Frontenac County are comparable to those in other similar institutions,” said Colleen Hickey, when asked to compare the numbers.

In her more comprehensive quarterly report, which was delivered to Council in October, Hickey pointed out that among unionized employees, 47% of emergency services staff, 35% of Fairmount Home staff, and 15% of corporate staff were absent more often than the amount targeted by their collective agreements. Over all, 42% of unionized employees were above their target as compared to only 9% of non-unionized employees.

She noted in October that two-thirds of Frontenac County staff work with the “most vulnerable people in our communities.”

Paul Charbonneau, Chief of Paramedic Services for the county, said those employees are working “in high risk jobs, dealing with sick people, and sometimes when dealing those people they get sick themselves.”

In receiving the absenteeism report, Councilor David Jones took aim at Frontenac Paramedic Services, which undertook a controversial cut in ambulance service in Kingston last year, partly in order to deal with the cost of absenteeism.

“We moved up 11% this year, despite mitigation promises last year,” he said to Charbonneau, “despite a strategy devised by yourself and the former CAO, we had promises of mitigation, but we are still climbing and climbing. It looks like we are up to seven weeks of sick time per employee. I'm wondering if you've got a comment on that.”

“The mitigation strategy you refer to was to mitigate against a budget increase; it did not address absenteeism. We have not had an absenteeism program in the paramedic services for couple of years. We introduced a new program at the beginning of this year. We hope to see improvements coming from that program," Charbonneau replied.

The cut in absenteeism at Fairmount Home that has been noted in both recent reports has been attributed to the improved implementation of the Employee Attendance Awareness Program in 2013.

The program is being revamped this spring.

Sticker Shock Over emergency communications 5-7M Price Tag

South Frontenac Fire Chief Rick Cheseborough, speaking for the fire and public works departments from across Frontenac County, asked Frontenac County Council to make a major investment in internal communications last week.

In place of the current system in which signals are sent out from one communications tower at a time, Cheseborough proposed a “simulcast” system in which every message that goes out will be simultaneously sent from every tower in the county.

This, he said, would mean that the county would be able to approach the Industry Canada standard for emergency communications whereby 95% of messages can be delivered to 95% of the locations in the county.

He also said that the simulcast system will enable communications between firefighters from multiple departments at complex emergency scenes.

“Back on December 17 [the date of a major fire at a construction site in downtown Kingston] we couldn't communicate with each other or with Kingston dispatch. Nobody knew what anybody else was doing,” he said,

He proposed that top tier communications radios be provided to firefighters, with second tier radios for public works departments to support a system that will be used for public works as well as fire departments across the county.

Although Cheseborough made the presentation to Frontenac County last week (February 19) the fire chiefs and public works managers from all of the Frontenac townships were in attendance, signalling their support for the proposal.

Before talking about the cost of the system, Chesebrough said there were risks involved with not making a change.

“What will it cost if we do nothing?” he said. “What is the cost of putting public members of our communities at risk, putting our firefighters at risk, and putting our public workers at risk? By doing nothing it could cost more than just money. I can't stress enough how critical the situation is right now,” he said

The cost of the project is estimated at $5 million to $7 million. Because the system will be in place for a long time, Chesebrough said it made sense to finance it over a 15-year period.

Members of County Council, who had been listening attentively to Cheseboroug's presentation, then suffered from sticker shock.

“We will have a challenge coming up with $7 million,” said Deputy Warden Dennis Doyle from Frontenac Islands. “It has taken us weeks to find nickels and dimes in our budget talks.”

“I was supportive when you first came in. Quite frankly, I'm shocked at the price. I had no idea. I don't know how something that was adequate ten years ago has slipped so much that now you are saying it is mission critical,” said Councilor John Inglis from North Frontenac.

Central Frontenac Mayor Janet Gutowski asked if the ambulance service, which operates on its own communications system, has been consulted.

Cheseborough said it had not.

Paul Charbonneau, the chief of paramedic services for Frontenac County, said that his service uses a system that is owned and operated by the province, and although there has been talk of sharing communications systems among services on a provincial level, nothing has come of it thus far.

South Frontenac Mayor Gary Davison said, “I am somewhat concerned about how we are going to find that kind of money. I know we have some money available, but nothing like that.”

The proposal will be aired further at a Committee of the Whole meeting of Council on March 5.