Auckland Council set to cut 500 more jobs
In an email to staff from acting chief executive Patricia Reade today she said fulltime equivalent staff numbers would reduce from 6500 to about 6000. The job cuts are on top of 600 part-time staff who have already been let go by council, one of the city's largest employers. Next week councillors will make tough calls on the "emergency budget" to plug the hole, including savage cuts to transport and fewer community services. Reade said she knows staff will be concerned about what the budget means to them and their role at the council. "The economic impact of Covid-19 has meant the entire council group is having to work hard to find savings, so we can continue to deliver the services that Aucklanders value." She said the council's share of the savings is significant at around $120 million and some tough decisions about how we prioritise and deliver our services for Aucklanders. Good progress was being made, she said, with each business area in council having identified savings of about $90m.
These include deferring or slowing down projects, scaling back events or reducing spending in areas like marketing and professional services. Reade said the council began with contractors and temps, removing more than 600 positions, and have asked staff earning over $100,000 to consider voluntary pay reductions. "But even with these measures in place, we will need to reduce the size of our workforce to meet the overall savings target.
"We estimate that we will need to reduce the number of full-time equivalent staff in our organisation from around 6500 at the end of June to around 6000. "This is only an estimate at this stage, but it reinforces that to play our part we will need to become a smaller, more adaptable organisation," 'Reade said. The job cuts apply to council staff, not staff at the five CCOs.
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Poll: Should drivers retake the theory test every 10 years?
Drivers get where they need to go, but sometimes it seems that we are all abiding by different road rules (for example, the varying ways drivers indicate around a roundabout).
Do you think drivers should be required to take a quick driving theory test every 10 years?
Vote in the poll and share any road rules that you've seen bent! 😱
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49.5% Yes
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48.6% No
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1.9% Other - I'll share below
Here's Thursday's thinker!
I am lighter than air, but a hundred people cannot lift me. What am I?
Do you think you know the answer to our daily riddle? Don't spoil it for your neighbours! Simply 'Like' this post and we'll post the answer in the comments below at 2pm.
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Head here and hover on the Following button on the top right of the page (and it will show Unfollow) and then click it. If it is giving you the option to Follow, then you've successfully unfollowed the Riddles page.
Why make picking up reserved library books harder? What do you think? Challenge: Write the last stanza for the first poem attached below.
Once books are reserved in Auckland Libraries books, when they are available no longer go alphabetically by customer but instead go into a Holds pickup shelf number based presumably somehow on when each book needs to be picked up by.
I had two books reserved that arrived on two different days in the Blockhouse Bay Library and hence each book has a different shelf number. Hard to find unless you knew the shelf number in the notification email. Even if you knew the shelf number I found myself three books by the same author on the two shelf numbers.
More recently yesterday a book I reserved was on a different shelf number than was specified in my notification email (see image below).
Sadly it is clear from library staff that a numerical system for reserves is here to stay.
I suggest that so that all books for each person has the same shelf number, the shelf number becomes the last digit of a person's library card (0-9).
Within each shelf number a book is found under the day the reserve arrives in the library (01 to 31, hopefully the same date the email is sent).
Since a customer appears to have 10 days to pick up a book, ten days of the month would appear to be required at any time (for each digit 0-9).
Once there are 10 days used the next day's reserves could go back at the beginning of the shelf number after any remaining books not collected (hopefully none) are removed (along with the old day number and the new day number (01 to 31) inserted) after the last day available and future days' books remaining moved forward to make room.
Each day number (01-31) would appear once for each shelf number (0-9) before the first book on that day- perhaps cover an old withdrawn book with paper with each day number on the spine?
When a reserved book arrives in the library the last digit of the library card could be placed on a piece of paper in the book to be removed when it is put on the shelf, to be recycled the next day.
What do you think?
See the image below and page 3 below for a letter appearing in the Western Leader on 9 September:
www.neighbourly.co.nz...
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