City's Overtime Spending Soars, Absences Impact Services

0:00It's April 10th. This is Canada News today, powered by AI. The city is shelling out massive overtime cash to cover workers out sick or hurt and it's piling up fast. In 2025 alone, they dropped nearly $21.9 million on overtime for short-term disability absences, which ate up, more than 518,000 work hours. An audit dropped on February 25th exposed some real issues in the abilities management program, like sloppy record-keeping, no follow-up on, cases and even wrong dates messing up the system. The team is swamped too, handling double the cases they should, with each of the seven staff juggling about 12 new ones a day. These absences hit hard because services like transit, fire and by-law enforcement can't just pause. They got a backfill to keep things running. Local health claims jumped 25% since the pandemic from around 432 to 54080 years, thanks to. Tough for cases and delays in getting specialists.

1:02Auditors called out partial progress, spotting incomplete diagnoses in some files and data errors that can mix up employee records. They recommended better documentation, evaluating return to work programs, and building a full evaluation framework, all of which the city accepted. Design plans to knock out some fixes by June 30th this year, with others by March 31st, 2027, shifting to proactive, stay at work, strategies to cut costs and get folks back faster without more resources.