The operations of the Eastlink Centre received an extensive review last winter following the discovery of a 2.3 million dollar deficit as a result of bookkeeping error.
The consultants conducting the review brought a full report to the city in April, and Community Living Director Garry Roth says every recommendation from that review is being implemented.
“We certainly made the leadership decision that we need to go through with all the recommendations. It wasn’t really a council direction, it was something that we felt we needed to do. We told council that was the direction that we were heading, and it’s something we need to do to help instill public confidence in the building and our abilities to manage it.”
The review came at a difficult time for the facility, but Roth says such a review would be a beneficial to undertake again in the future regardless of the state of operations.
“Having an outside look from time to time is a healthy thing for us. While it was painful to go through when the original issues came up last fall, we’ve learned a lot by doing this review. We’ve put a lot of things in place, and how we do business internally has changed and that makes a lot stronger in the end.”
Roth says the majority of changes will be behind the scenes and that the only difference the public may notice is less staff during peak hours and new programming that’s being introduced at the facility this fall.