A program that keeps people in their homes longer is caught up in what one city official calls a bureaucratic nightmare.
The homemaking program helps 34 people with everything from bathing to light housekeeping to exercise. At $65,000 a year it`s funded up to $18 per hour by the province with the city picking up the rest of the tab and administered by the District of Thunder Bay Social Services Administrative Board. The program was heading back to full control of the city effective Dec. 31 until it was discovered that the program needs a welfare administrator, something DSSAB has but the city no longer does.
City council, which has six members on the DSSAB board, debated Monday whether to ask the board to continue the program or at least extend it six months until an alternative could be figured out. Coun. Joe Virdiramo said he wanted council to wait until the DSSAB executive met Tuesday before making a request. Otherwise it seemed to Virdiramo that the city was giving the DSSAB an ultimatum.
Coun. Iain Angus said that wasn`t the case.
“I certainly don’t see this as a threat or push,” he said.
Community Services manager Greg Alexander said the whole process is getting awkward between city administration and the DSSAB. He was told that the city needed to act quickly to pass a request along and that it had to be board-to-board. It would have been much easier if administrative staff from both sides could have just discussed it and figured something out. The DSSAB is becoming inaccessible.
“That’s creating a bureaucratic nightmare,” he said.
Council eventually approved the request.
