Concessions - Business or Service

As part of our digging deeper into budget, for the first time that I can recall, we've seen detailed revenues and expenditures for the various city concessions.  In the past, we've only gotten generalized numbers, without specifics.  As is so often the case, once the details are available, then we can ask better questions, including getting to the basic question of "If we aren't getting a decent return, why are we doing this?"

It's a fundamental question when you're running a business - you run it in order to make a profit.  When it comes to providing a service, well, then it gets trickier - how much should the city be expected to provide to people who visit the Art Hauser Centre, or the soccer centre?

Of course, we don't get the returns from what is generally considered to be the most profitable product - alcohol sales.  The beer sales from the 7th Hole concession cart at the golf course and the Art Hauser Centre go to the tenants - the Golf and Curling Club and the Raiders, respectively.  Those two groups were thinking like businesses, and the city wasn't, when those deals were made.  It's something to remember when we're renegotiating those arrangements.

And we also found out that during the major athletic competitions that Prince Albert hosted last winter, the concessions weren't always open to take advantage of potential business - hard to make money when you're not open, and it also makes people less reliant on the service, if it's not going to be something they can count on.  In fact, it seems to be common knowledge that it's often faster to go to Timmy's during hockey intermissions than to line up at the concession - and the coffee is better too.

One councillor suggested that we should look at concessions as a service provided by the city, not as a profit generator.  If that's the case, then we should do a couple of things.  First, we should pare down the offerings to the basics, and to products that have a long shelf life, so that we don't lose additional money throwing out perishables that haven't sold.  That would keep our costs down.  Second, if a concession is a service, then let's add a portion of the cost to user fees, since it would be a part of the service provided by the facility.

On the other hand, if it's going to be a revenue generator, let's have it run more like a business - open during prime money-making times, closed when it doesn't pay.  Again, limit the choices, to reduce the costs.  And let's improve the speed of service, so that people don't feel that it's better to go off-site.

I am glad that we've finally seen the numbers, even if the results are disappointing.  And now that our eyes have been opened, and we have the facts, let's decide why we do things, before we decide on how.

"More business is lost through neglect than through any other cause." - Rose Kennedy

Questioning the Importance of Questions

At last week's council meeting, council voted to remove the public inquiry portion of council meetings.  I'm not sure what the impetus was for this - I know that some councillors thought that it was taking up too much time on the council agenda - sometimes as much as half an hour.  And some felt that other councillors misused the opportunity, bringing up a lengthy list of micromanaging questions, possibly with the hope of moving these things up on the list of getting things done.

I didn't vote with the majority on this one, and two fellow councillors were also in opposition.  I believe that our reasons were similar - public inquiries is a good place to raise questions that have been raised with us, in the interests of educating both our fellow council members and the general public.  For instance, a few years back, I had a question that I raised during the public portion of the meeting, about the number of homes in Prince Albert that still had lead water service connections.  Not only did this make many people aware of this potential health hazard, it also led to the development of a program to assist people in having these connections replaced, and to guidelines for how to keep your drinking water safe if you do live in one of these homes.

The direction now is that members of council are to direct their inquiries to the city manager, who will then direct them to the appropriate department.  However, this doesn't let other councillors know about an issue that may also interest them (unless we choose to bury ourselves in emails cc'd to everybody), and more importantly, it leaves out the public education piece.  It also slows the process down - if a question is raised at council, the appropriate department head is made aware of it right away, rather than having it filtered through the extra level of bureaucracy.

If there was an issue with too much time being spent at council meetings on these questions, I can think of a couple of ways we could have reduced the time without removing the entire process.  Providing guidelines to councillors about what is appropriate for public inquiries would be one way - specific questions about details on when, for example, a worrisome tree on a boulevard is going to be removed are not of general interest, and can be dealt with outside the public process.  Councillors need to remember that our job isn't to micromanage project priorities, or tell staff how to do their jobs.  If a constituent calls with a question, a councillor's job is to find the answer, not to get the job moved higher on the priority list.

Limiting questions to the public council meeting, rather than having them raised in all three forums (council, executive and committee of the whole) would also save time, as would limiting each councillor to the number of questions at each meeting, or perhaps having questions at alternate meetings, as we do now with public forum.

I would rather we had explored some options for solving the perceived problem, rather than just abolishing completely the idea of raising questions publicly.  Most of us talked about improving transparency with city business when we were asking for people's support in the last election - now we have taken away one of our tools for transparency, which I'm sure is disappointing to more people than just me and two other members of council.

"The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge." - Thomas Berger

Just What Is SCAN?

At last week'c council meeting I was pleased to propose, and to have the rest of council support, a proposal to the provincial government to expand the current SCAN program to have staff in Prince Albert as well as in Saskatoon and Regina.  And I had no problem with amending the motion to include having a liquor inspector located here as well, since that aligns with our increasing awareness of the underlying factor of alcohol abuse in so many of our community problems.

SCAN stands for Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods, and is a program run through the Ministry of Justice.  It's built on the premise that the problems in many neighbourhoods can be directly linked to one or more problem residences or businesses, and that taking action against these particular problem locations can reduce overall crime in the neighbourhood.

The program recognizes that problem residences are most easily identified by the neighbours, who can observe habitual activities like multiple vehicles coming and going, but not staying long - the classic sign of a residence that's being used for drug trafficking.  The police just don't have the resources to have personnel watching consistently, so having neighbours notice these things is making use of the people who have the most at stake.  Reporting to SCAN is totally confidential, as well, which may reduce the risk of people not reporting for fear of retribution.

A SCAN referral doesn't mean that a residence or business is shut down immediately - warning letters to the property owner are usually the first step, unless the problem is acute enough to warrant immediate closure of the residence.  But it focuses on removing the location of criminal activity, not trying to gather sufficient evidence to prosecute individuals.  In many cases, of course, the true source of the criminal activity is several steps away - what SCAN does is make it more difficult for criminals to have a place to operate out of, which makes the neighbourhood safer as a result.

The underlying premise of the program is sound; the problem for Prince Albert is that the staff are too far away to respond quickly and efficiently to problems here, and that's what my motion was about - encouraging the province to expand a program with a good success rate to a city that needs it.

In my fourteen years on council, I've spent quite a bit of time working on making neighbourhoods safer, and I've found that all too often, it's a single house that's the source of problems.  And I've had many people thank me when the criminal activity based out of that house stops - the whole neighbourhood benefits.  I know that one house that I can see from my front door used to have people coming and going at all hours, with loud parties on the weekends.  It was finally placarded because the water was shut off, but it was a long and painful process for those of us in the neighbourhood, and for the police.  Perhaps if SCAN had been in place then, it would have been quicker.  And now that I'm seeing suspicious activity going on in a building that I can see from my kitchen window, I'm hoping that using SCAN will help, not just me, but my whole neighbourhood.

We often hear complaints about how people don't look out for their neighbours any more.  Well, this is a chance for us to try to bring some of that sense back.  Just as you watch for strange activities near their home when you know your neighbours are away, SCAN encourages you to watch for symptoms of habitual criminal activity, and gives you a place to call.  I just hope that soon, the number to call will be a local one.

"You can observe a lot by just watching." - Yogi Berra

Looking Back at Summer, and Forward to Fall

All too soon, summer is winding down.  I notice it most in the early evenings, when it gets dark so early.  The cooler mornngs are a big change too - it's hard to believe that less than two weeks ago Andrea and I were sweltering through a hot and humid summer day in Toronto before catching the train back to Saskatoon - apparently the first over 30 day that they had enjoyed all year.  The Ontario summer was even cooler than ours, which is certainly a change.

The start of fall seems like a time of new beginnings, probably because those school day feelings stay with us our whole lives.  Although council doesn't break for the summer, we do have fewer meetings, they start earlier in the day, and we abandon our usual dress code for July and August.  So now it's back to the suit, weekly meetings (Council and Executive in alternating weeks), and the 5 p.m. meeting start.

I didn't have my usual summer building project, unlike last year, when I shingled the north half of the house, or the year before when I built a deck.  This year I did spend some time at Ingrid's house in Saskatoon, replacing the frames around her two front windows, and replacing the roof vent.  We also spent some time helping Guthrie as he moved to Saskatoon to start a new job, and find new living arrangements.  I do have an indoor project planned - putting new hardwood floors in the living room, and putting in new under-floor heating there as well.  It's the kind of project that doesn't depend on a stretch of good weather, and shouldn't be as brutal on me as last year's roof project turned out to be.

For council, this fall marks the half-way point of the current term.  We have continued to work well as a team, and I think that we've made good progress on one of our major goals, catching up on some of the road repair backlog, although not as much as last year, because of the weather.  And we've set some new targets for ourselves, most notably our goal of having the budget process completed before the end of the calendar year, rather than in the spring.

Shifting the timeline for the budget back by months is going to require extra effort by administration, since many of our budget decisions depend on knowing how this year's money has been spent, and the turnaround on that information isn't always known quickly.  However, the target was made known quite early - if it turns out not to be feasible, then adjustments will have to be made to the process.

As always, I hope that as a council we do a better job of focusing on the job at hand, and we take the energy of the new beginning of fall to remember our priorities, and work together to keep the momentum going through the winter.

"You can't turn the clock back, so you have to look ahead." - Mel Gibson