New Westminster residents and businesses will soon have more time to get their business done at city hall.
The City of New Westminster is launching a pilot project that will see city hall’s hours of operation extended on weekdays. The initiative is aimed at enhancing and expanding customer service for residents and businesses.
Starting Monday, March 30, city hall will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Mondays and from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Friday. City hall is currently open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday to Friday.
“We recognize that many residents and businesses may find it challenging to conduct their city hall business during the current 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. hours of operation,” Mayor Jonathan Cote said in a press release. “By extending city hall hours, and in particular, customer services hours at our reception, finance, business licensing, planning, plumbing and building permit counters, we can better meet the demands of our changing community.”
Joan Burgess, the city’s director of human resources, said selected areas of city hall will remain open late.
“We will have staff representatives of every department at city hall available, but not fully staffed, until 8 p.m. Anyone coming up to the customer counters will have full customer service,” she told the Record. “The whole idea is to enhance services for our customers, make us more available to them.”
Burgess said it’s not uncommon to see people arriving at city hall before the doors open or after they close.
“Having the doors open, I think to 5 o’clock will certainly help. We’ll see – it’s a pilot,” she said. “We are going to have customer service survey forms throughout the building and we are hoping to get lots of feedback to tell us whether this is helpful to people.”
New Westminster won’t be the first Lower Mainland city to open its doors a little later in the day.
“We are almost surrounded by other municipalities that do have some kind of extended and/or flexible work arrangements,” Burgess said. “We have just been a little slow to get on that particular bandwagon.”
Monday is the day that New Westminster city council meetings are held, meetings often attended by some staff.
“We thought, we are here anyways, we might as well open up the building,” Burgess said. “I am hoping that it will probably reduce some operating costs, such as overtime, because we need our computer people, our tech people available.”
Burgess said she hasn’t calculated the financial impact of extending city hall’s hours of operation.
“There will be no additional cost,” she said. “What I am hoping is we will see some savings.”
According to Burgess, CUPE initially floated the idea about extended city hall hours a number of years ago.
“We have been working together on it. It is very much a joint agreement,” she said. “We will both be overseeing the pilot project to see how it all works out for us. There certainly was no pushback from CUPE. They were fully supportive of it.”
The pilot project will be in effect until Dec. 31, 2015, at which time it will be reviewed and adjusted if required.
According to a press release from the city, the extended operating hours will be facilitated through a compressed work week arrangement, which will see city hall employees work additional hours during the week in exchange for flexible days off. The city states that this type of arrangement has realized overall cost savings through reductions in overtime in other jurisdictions.
During the pilot project phase, residents and businesses will be encouraged to provide feedback on the extended hours through comment cards available at city hall and an online public survey.
“As our city grows, we will continue to look for new and innovative ways to serve the community,” Cote said. “I encourage everyone to provide feedback on the pilot project and to let us know how we can best serve our residents and businesses.”
