Money, money, money

Sir Henry Lauder, a turn of the century entertainer from Scotland, once said that a bank book can make good reading – better than some novels. Over at the region, that novel could very well be about the consulting industry.

Now, consultants can be found in every level of government, on all sides of the political spectrum, for varying degrees of money. In 2011, the federal government hired a consulting company, at a cost of approximately $90,000 per day, to help them find savings and eventually balance the books by 2014. Consultants met with federal cabinet ministers just a couple of weeks ago for an unknown sum of money to talk about how to go about delivering on campaign promises.

There is certainly a place in this world for consultants. It never hurts to bring in outside expertise when your entity – whether it is a government or private corporation – does not have it.

The problem, however, comes when consultants are brought in to do something that there is already people on staff that can do it.

Moving forward with an earlier commitment to install carbon monoxide detectors into regional buildings, a report presented to Durham’s works committee also called for $20,000 to go toward a consultant to ensure that the spots chosen for the detectors were the correct ones.

There’s just one problem – there is this group of people called municipal fire inspectors whose job description includes, believe it or not, inspecting buildings to see where carbon monoxide detectors should be placed. And each municipality has one on the payroll.

With these people already in place, regional chair Roger Anderson was well in his right to call out staff for asking for thousands of dollars to bring in additional people when there are already people on municipal payrolls that can do the job.

What Anderson was sure to point out, is that their services would come at no extra cost.

For most people, a choice between spending no money and spending $20,000 is a no brainer.

Complaints about constantly bringing in consultants to help with regional initiatives has received its criticism in the past, with Clarington councillor Joe Neal decrying the “hundreds of thousands of dollars that we spent on consultants” during budget deliberations earlier this year.

So in the future, the region – and all levels of government for that matter – should take a second look before spending taxpayer money on a consultant when they very well could already have people on staff that can do the same job.