Being a student is serious work if you approach what you do with integrity.
The formula is well understood. Go to school and concentrate on the reason for you being there in the first place, and I’m not talking beer pong here.
Do what you need to do, make the most of the experience, budget your money, and if there’s time and necessity, get yourself a part-time job to help with the bills or possibly enhance the quality of your student life.
You’ve done all that can be asked. You worked a part time job throughout high school and managed to save some money. Maybe your parents are helping you foot the bill for college or university. If not, or if not enough to significantly move the affordability needle, then you apply for OSAP — Ontario Student Assistance Program — for an interest-free loan, and possibly a significant grant, to help you get to where you’re going.
September turns to April and you’ve got a year under your belt, but it’s expensive, and sure OSAP will likely be there for you again, but it’s not like you’re going to be dining out on Oysters Rockefeller with just OSAP.
So you need a summer job. Preferably one that allows you to remain in your hometown, and not have to travel. A job that pays a decent summer student wage, provides marketable experience, and allows you to sleep in your own bed every night with your cat Sparky at the foot of your bed, just like always.
There was once a time where the Town of Renfrew would hire a number of summer students for work opportunities in a number of contexts, from Public Works and Parks and Recreation to the McDougall Mill and tourism outreach.
But that was once upon a time, and during a time when significant municipal debt didn’t hang over Town Council like an albatross. But that was then and, unfortunately, this is now, and the new reality may not be good news for you if you’re looking for a summer job with the Town of Renfrew.
Council is going through draft budget deliberations, and it’s not pretty, not even a little bit. No matter which way they go, and what decision they make, there will be no pretty in it. Making cuts, I suppose is a good thing, as it relieves some of the financial pressure moving forward. But making cuts is, essentially, a bad thing, as something that was there before is there no longer, so it’s tough to spin a cut as a positive thing.
I used to say it was like watching your mother-in-law drive off a cliff in your brand new Cadillac, a sort of mixed emotions kind of thing. But it’s not. It’s like watching your mother-in-law drive off a cliff in your brand new Cadillac, only at the last minute, she gets free of the car before it tumbles into the abyss. More of a lose-lose proposition.
As mentioned, Renfrew has traditionally hired summer students for a variety of tasks, and April was the critical month for all concerned. It’s in April that waves of summer school candidates put forward their applications for summer employment, and it’s in April where the municipality would hire successful candidates before the good ones get snapped up by somebody else.
Sometimes, grant money from the province or the federal government might be available to make the hiring and compensating of said students an easier thing to absorb for the municipal budget. But even with subsidies such as these, the Town still needs to cough up the balance to make sure these people get paid, so it’s a line item that appears in budget deliberations. That means that it’s something that could theoretically, or even probably, face the budget axe.
It’s not just that.
Making cuts in other areas often has a cascading effect. For example, if you close the doors to a museum, it’ll likely trickle down to impact the hiring of a summer student. Also, if a student applied for a job at the museum and was successful, they were responding to an ad that had a specific job description, meaning that if you close the museum, you can’t just re-assign that person to the dump or public works. As well, the grant money was likely specific to the museum, coming as it did from a government ministry responsible for tourism and culture. They guard their money like everyone else, so if you don’t use the money because there’s no open museum to staff, then you’ve got to give them back the cash, because some other municipality could make use of it.
To be sure, there’s still work to be done at the museum even if it’s closed to the public. Records management, artifact cataloguing, lawn cutting, and hedge-trimming would be just some. So it’s possible to hire some students at such a place, even if the place isn’t open to the public.
Perhaps the biggest problem is the timeline.
Renfrew advertised for several summer student positions, with potential candidates applying and being interviewed. That process is completed, and successful applicants were contacted with conditional job offers dependant upon Council giving the go-ahead to hire for those positions. When you’re a potential summer student, conditional doesn’t pay the bills or feed the cat, it just raises hope. And tragically, that hope can be dashed if Council decides to not go through with the hires. And the cat goes hungry.
All students that have been successful applicants have been advised of this and told that Council will make a decision by April 8. That’s about as fair as it gets, not that fairness has anything to do with a situation where major cuts are going to be part of the response to the economic rehabilitation of the corporation.
If the issue extends past April 8, then a situation that department directors fear may come to pass, that being that the really good candidates decided not to wait around for Renfrew to decide on what it’s going to do and went ahead and found other summer employment.
For such a student, it’s a consolation prize I suppose, although perhaps not ideal. They may find another job that pays less, or requires travel, or involves a situation that wouldn’t normally be considered if desperation wasn’t part of the calculation. For the town, it represents a loss of potential talent, of effective workers, and subsidized by the province.
A win-win is impossible. A win-lose is possible if you view the student taking another job as a win for them and a loss for the town. But for the town itself, it can only be considered as a lose-lose, in that they eliminate a budget expense but miss out on all of that subsidized labour that would have substantially helped out. As well, nobody is going to pat Council on the back for closing a museum, or declining to hire summer students, as there is no thanks in such a task.
And no matter what they do, count on them being criticized liberally for closing the museum, not closing the museum, hiring students or not hiring students.
These are tough times for just about everyone, but they’re particularly tough for decision-makers. Especially when no matter the decision you make, there’s going to be a wagon load of political blow-back from the community.
This is the plight of decision-makers everywhere who have to make difficult decisions based upon the action or inaction of others previously.
I wish I could offer something a little more substantial than my best wishes.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 