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EDITORIAL: Shedding some light on the budget canopy

When it comes to any city’s budgeting process, there are some things that are fixed costs.

When it comes to any city’s budgeting process, there are some things that are fixed costs.

Those might include things like paying for the RCMP contract, liability insurance, or investing in  the BC Winter Games —- all costs that are outside the city’s direct control.

We would argue that should include firefighter’s wages.

The City of Penticton is already embroiled in a Supreme Court lawsuit trying to upset the wage increases awarded to the firefighters through mutually binding arbitration this summer, which also gave them wage parity with their peers across the province.

Now the city is launching a parallel attack, trying to bring a motion to the next Union of BC Municipalities Association convention asking for the UBCM to advocate that the provincial government specify “arbitrators are to give consideration to local conditions.”

It might be different if the City of Penticton hadn’t spent more than five years not being able to come to a collective agreement with the firefighters — their last contract ended in Dec. 2009, and the five-year agreement set by the arbitrator ended on Dec. 31, 2015.

Given the lawsuit, the five years of contract negotiations and this latest resolution, an outsider might think that the City of Penticton didn’t value its fire department.

Penticton is struggling with its finances this year, and they need to watch their expenses. But it should also be noted that during the five years the firefighters were without a contract, the city managed to quietly put enough money into a reserve account to cover the retroactive pay. So what’s changed?

Giving the firefighters wage parity with their peers may mean taxes have to rise, or it may mean the city may have to be more frugal about their spending and not invest in a $500,000 light canopy over half a block of Main Street.

Can you look a firefighter in the face and say their job isn’t as dangerous and valuable as that done by his/her peers in the Lower Mainland?