One of the procedural rules of council is what is called "notice of motion". Members of council can't just put forward a motion on the spur of the moment. Instead, the process is to notify council that at the next meeting, you intend to introduce a motion about a specific topic. Then, at that next meeting, hopefully with a seconder prepared to help you get it on the floor for discussion, you present the actual motion.
Once you have made the notice, you are then required to either make the motion, or withdraw it. In the last term of council, one member made a notice of motion, which then turned out to be more complicated than he thought it would be (renaming city facilities may offend those who were involved in the initial naming, I guess), but instead of withdrawing his notice, he chose instead to rise in each subsequent meeting to postpone introducing the motion. I suppose, with the end of the last council term, his notice just died, but it indicates the importance of doing your homework, and knowing procedure, before giving notice.
Anyway, at tomorrow's meeting (delayed one day because of Victoria Day) a couple of members of council will be introducing motions for which they gave notice at the last meeting.
One notice had to do with a proposal to stop all street oiling by 2012. For those of you who live in newer parts of town, you may not be aware of this practice, but for those of us who live in areas where not all streets are paved, this is an ongoing, if environmentally questionable practice, intended to help reduce the dust that flies about in the summer. Until a few years ago, the avenue that runs past our house was oiled every year, which was a pain on oiling day, as we had to keep our animals out of the oil, and Andrea had to detour in her walk home from work, to avoid getting oil on her shoes. Fortunately, the avenue was subject to the modified paving program, so there's no more oiling, although the modified paving has proven not to last, and those avenues and streets where this was done are now starting to fall apart.
The cost of oiling is included on an affected residential tax bill, as a local improvement. Residents on a street or avenue can petition against oiling, but are then left with the dust. The current street paving program requires that residents who want to have their street paved must get a petition signed by the majority of residents - not always easy to do, since it means an increase in the tax bill for all residents.
No question, oiling is not the thing to do environmentally. But I'm not sure if some councillors aren't rushing to show how environmentally friendly they are without considering what alternatives we should be offering. Are we now going to embark on a program to pave all city streets? If so, we should be aware of what the costs are, and figure out how those costs are going to be covered. As well, we need to do the job right - modified paving may be cheaper to start with, but the ongoing maintenance requirements quickly push the long-term costs considerably higher.
I'll be interested to see if the councillor who made the notice of motion has considered all of the implications in carrying out such a motion.
Another notice of motion was made by the mayor. His motion is to have council meetings start at 5 p.m., year round, rather than the current practice of starting at 7 (except for summer months). Rather than having Committee of the Whole meetings immediately before the Council Meeting (that's our in camera session that usually starts at 4 p.m.), these meetings would instead be held before Executive Committee meetings (which usually start at 5 p.m.) on alternate weeks.
I'm interested in hearing what the rationale will be for this change. In my opinion, having council meetings start at 5 p.m. is another step in making our decision-making processes harder for the public to access. I have to wonder if Shaw Cable will be able to get its volunteers out to broadcast meetings that start exactly when most people's work days are ending. It also makes it less convenient for council members who hold a nine-to-five job to get there for start time. That may not affect many current councillors, but these changes may make being on council less convenient for those thinking of letting their name stand in the future.
About the only benefit that I can think could come from this might be that tax-payers would no longer be funding an evening meal for most members of council (I no longer participate in this meal, since I heard clearly from city residents that they didn't think that this practice was right). But that would be a small benefit, compared to the cost of making council deliberations harder for people to follow.
Some members of the current council talk endlessly about being open and accountable, but their actions - passing items discussed at Executive in blocks, rather than discussing them individually at the actual council meeting, rushing through budget discussions in a single day, and even refusing to open up critical sections of the budget or provide information about operating costs of city-funded facilities - instead say that they don't believe that council or its decisions should be open to the average citizen, the people who are actually paying the bills. Too often, it seems that the discussions about various aspects of running the city are happening behind closed doors, with the final council vote a mere formality.
I know that there are members of council who think that they know what is best for the city, without asking for outside opinions. I know that there are those who think that discussing things in private, and figuring out how to get the results that will benefit them and their supporters, is the way that the world works. But I still believe that if we are doing the right thing, we shouldn't be trying to hide our processes, but instead we should be trying to be as open and forthright as possible. We all need to recognize that, although we have been elected, that election didn't automatically confer wisdom or infallibility. And sadly, the record of some of our actions really underscores our need to consult more widely and discuss more fully.
Just once, wouldn't it be nice if we thought of what might make things easier for the tax-payer, rather than figuring out how to keep our actions less visible.
"The smaller the mind, the greater the conceit." - Aesop
Monday, May 24, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Learning the Rules of the Game
In my previous term on council, I suggested that council could use some outside advice on how it operated - people seemed to not understand how the council process worked, or what their role, as members of council, should be when it came to decision-making. Most of my then colleagues didn't see the need for such assistance, with one council member suggesting that it was too far along in the term for such advice to be of any benefit.
And now, with this newer council, I'm seeing many of the same problems. Members of council don't appear to be familiar with such basic actions as making motions, or how to allow fellow councillors to make their motions without being interrupted, or how to properly chair a meeting, or when it's appropriate to abstain from voting, or what the various parts of the agenda are to be used for. And it's not that the information isn't out there - it's just that, with the current council and administration, each councillor needs to do their own homework.
This was emphasized to me after the last council meeting, when one of my favourite constituents called me, to ask why things seemed so disorganized, and why the council member who was chairing part of the meeting was allowed to question the councillor who was trying to make a motion, rather than allowing her to finish. Part of it might be bad manners, part of it might be confusion over the responsibility of the meeting chair - the person in that position is merely the traffic coordinator, not the boss, and as chair, is not supposed to participate in discussion at all.
The motion in question was to have council do something that is already their responsibility - have committee appointments come to council, rather than decided solely by the mayor, without any review by council as a whole. Committees are supposed to be appointed by council; this council chose to give away that responsibility earlier this term, when they allowed the mayor to make all appointments without questioning either the process or the results. As a council, we have the authority - we just chose to give it away. As with most authority, once you've given it away, it's hard to get back. But making a motion to get something that we already have isn't the way to correct the situation.
At that same meeting I used my time during councillors' forum to ask where in the Police Act legislation it said that the police budget was to be kept confidential, and couldn't be shared with the public. I raised the question, because when I asked during the budget vote why we weren't provided with the complete police budget, I was told that it wasn't allowed under legislation. I've been told things that aren't true frequently by both adminstration and other members of council, so I did some searching through the legislation myself, and couldn't find anything. And because the budget is no longer on the agenda, I couldn't ask the question during the main part of the meeting. But councillors' forum is not intended to be a mere recital of social engagements that one has attended on behalf of the city, it is supposed to be for councillors to raise concerns and ideas that are outside the regular agenda, but still worthy of raising. I'm surprised that a veteran councillor first resorted to name calling (suggesting that I'm a whiner for asking a question about information that has been improperly withheld), then told me that I was misusing councillors' forum. Okay, I'm not that surprised, because it seems that most councillors are just willing to go along with the crowd, and not make waves or ask questions, because then they might be punished by being removed from a committee that is dear to them.
Part of the problem is that people come on to council with only a vague idea of how things work. Most have never attended a meeting, or reviewed a budget. Most don't know (and neither does the general public, I'd bet), that we don't follow Robert's Rules of Order, but a different system- that's why the chair gets a vote every time, not just when there's a tie. Most rely on other members of council for guidance - this is fine, up to a point, but we have to remember that other members may not know any more than you do, or may have their own agendas. I remember one member of a previous council who said that you were supposed to vote the way the mayor did, simply because he was the mayor. I can only imagine where he got that idea.
When it comes right down to it, council members are not elected to be rubber stamps. We each have a responsibility and obligation to educate ourselves about the job - each member should read The Cities Act at least once, for example - that's the law that we're supposed to follow. And each council member needs to follow their own principles and beliefs, and not vote just because you think that it will make things easier for you down the line. And don't be afraid to ask people who are no longer on council how things were in the past - they can provide useful advice, without the biases that current members of council may have.
It's a tough job, without much training available. But to continue to fumble along, to the point where people watching start to wonder why we look confused, shouldn't be considered our only option.
"Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary." - Robert Louis Stevenson
And now, with this newer council, I'm seeing many of the same problems. Members of council don't appear to be familiar with such basic actions as making motions, or how to allow fellow councillors to make their motions without being interrupted, or how to properly chair a meeting, or when it's appropriate to abstain from voting, or what the various parts of the agenda are to be used for. And it's not that the information isn't out there - it's just that, with the current council and administration, each councillor needs to do their own homework.
This was emphasized to me after the last council meeting, when one of my favourite constituents called me, to ask why things seemed so disorganized, and why the council member who was chairing part of the meeting was allowed to question the councillor who was trying to make a motion, rather than allowing her to finish. Part of it might be bad manners, part of it might be confusion over the responsibility of the meeting chair - the person in that position is merely the traffic coordinator, not the boss, and as chair, is not supposed to participate in discussion at all.
The motion in question was to have council do something that is already their responsibility - have committee appointments come to council, rather than decided solely by the mayor, without any review by council as a whole. Committees are supposed to be appointed by council; this council chose to give away that responsibility earlier this term, when they allowed the mayor to make all appointments without questioning either the process or the results. As a council, we have the authority - we just chose to give it away. As with most authority, once you've given it away, it's hard to get back. But making a motion to get something that we already have isn't the way to correct the situation.
At that same meeting I used my time during councillors' forum to ask where in the Police Act legislation it said that the police budget was to be kept confidential, and couldn't be shared with the public. I raised the question, because when I asked during the budget vote why we weren't provided with the complete police budget, I was told that it wasn't allowed under legislation. I've been told things that aren't true frequently by both adminstration and other members of council, so I did some searching through the legislation myself, and couldn't find anything. And because the budget is no longer on the agenda, I couldn't ask the question during the main part of the meeting. But councillors' forum is not intended to be a mere recital of social engagements that one has attended on behalf of the city, it is supposed to be for councillors to raise concerns and ideas that are outside the regular agenda, but still worthy of raising. I'm surprised that a veteran councillor first resorted to name calling (suggesting that I'm a whiner for asking a question about information that has been improperly withheld), then told me that I was misusing councillors' forum. Okay, I'm not that surprised, because it seems that most councillors are just willing to go along with the crowd, and not make waves or ask questions, because then they might be punished by being removed from a committee that is dear to them.
Part of the problem is that people come on to council with only a vague idea of how things work. Most have never attended a meeting, or reviewed a budget. Most don't know (and neither does the general public, I'd bet), that we don't follow Robert's Rules of Order, but a different system- that's why the chair gets a vote every time, not just when there's a tie. Most rely on other members of council for guidance - this is fine, up to a point, but we have to remember that other members may not know any more than you do, or may have their own agendas. I remember one member of a previous council who said that you were supposed to vote the way the mayor did, simply because he was the mayor. I can only imagine where he got that idea.
When it comes right down to it, council members are not elected to be rubber stamps. We each have a responsibility and obligation to educate ourselves about the job - each member should read The Cities Act at least once, for example - that's the law that we're supposed to follow. And each council member needs to follow their own principles and beliefs, and not vote just because you think that it will make things easier for you down the line. And don't be afraid to ask people who are no longer on council how things were in the past - they can provide useful advice, without the biases that current members of council may have.
It's a tough job, without much training available. But to continue to fumble along, to the point where people watching start to wonder why we look confused, shouldn't be considered our only option.
"Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary." - Robert Louis Stevenson
Saturday, April 24, 2010
A Small Tale of Crime
Last June, I was barbecuing some burgers for lunch, after being out all morning. While I was barbecuing, I heard the garage door opening, and looked up to see a kid, maybe twelve, sneaking down the driveway. I chased him, but he had the advantage of a head start, and being some forty years younger, although I did get close enough for him to turn and threaten to hit me. I wish that he had - I would have grabbed him. When I got back to the house, Andrea said that when she had arrived home for lunch there was a young girl sitting on a bike in the driveway. When Andrea asked what she was up to, she said that she was looking for her brother, then she rode away.
When I looked in the garage, I saw that Guthrie's bike had been taken down from the rafters. So, in retrospect, I guess these two criminals-in-training had been interrupted - the girl acting as lookout, closing the garage door so the boy could get the bicycle down without being observed. The girl rode about the neighbourhood for awhile, probably wondering if the boy was still inside the garage. I actually saw him that afternoon in city hall square - when he saw me he took off. And I saw him a couple of weeks ago, riding a bike around the Co-op parking lot - I almost stopped to ask him where he'd stolen it from.
Fast forward to this past Friday morning - I was heading upstairs to the attic to check out my emails, when I saw this same kid looking in the bed of a pick-up truck parked behind one of the apartment buildings behind our house. While I watched, he hopped into the bed of the truck, then slid the back window of the cab open and squeezed in. I called the police.
By the time I got out to the back alley, he had taken off, running between the houses toward Ninth Street. The truck alarm was going off, and the owner of the truck soon came out. As I was talking to her, the police arrived. I told the officer where the kid had gone, and he went off to look for him. Then we saw the kid coming down the back alley, having removed his jacket. The truck owner and I confronted him, and he took off. I called dispatch to ask them to let the officer know that the kid was no longer wearing the jacket, and the dispatch person told me that they were not going to pursue this, because the truck owner had said that she knew the kid. Then we saw the police vehicle pass the kid, now strolling casually down Ninth Street, the proud owner of at least one new CD.
Now, what the truck owner had told the officer was that she thought that she knew the kid, that possibly his grandmother lived in her building. What she hadn't said was that it was okay for him to have broken into her truck, but that seems to be the conclusion that both the officer and dispatch came to. I told dispatch this, and the next thing I know, the officer is at my door, after having paid a visit to the truck owner, to ask me what my problem is.
According to the truck owner, when the officer stopped in to talk to her, he advised her against pressing charges, because to do so would likely result in some form of retaliation, such as her tires being slashed. So apparently, when these petty crimes happen, we're not supposed to call the police, because they are unwilling to do anything, even when the criminal is identifiable, and walking past you.
So, yes, I have a problem. Two, actually. The first is that, given the opportunity to let a kid know that there are consequences to breaking into a vehicle and stealing someone else's property, the officer chose to do nothing. The second is that the officer actively discouraged the victim from pressing charges, because to do so might encourage the criminal to take further action.
I will say that I have since been contacted by the police, who have told me that they know this kid, that there are parenting issues, because apparently he doesn't go to school, but that they are going to follow up with the family. And I appreciate their attention to this, somewhat after the fact. Although I wonder what the odds are of there being some sort of improvement to behaviour, if the family doesn't care enough to get the kid to school.
Now, I know that the police are busy. I know that crimes like shootings and murder are of much greater importance than truck break-ins. But I can't help but think that the time taken for follow-up visits with both the crime victim and me would have been more productive if instead the officer had grabbed the kid, put him in the back seat of the car, and suggested to him that he was going to be on their radar, and any time they saw him in a back alley or hanging about with other kids, they would be pulling over to find out what he was up to. Or why not just toss him in a cell for a few hours, then follow up with the family? In other words, put some fear into him of the consequences of breaking the law, no matter how relatively minor it may seem.
It seemed somewhat ironic to read in the paper that same day that, according to a speech given by the police chief at a Chamber of Commerce lunch, their approach to crime is to "fix it (criminal behaviour) at the lowest level". He even suggests paying "a lot of attention to" people in the fifteen to twenty-four age group, since it's people in that age range who commit the most crimes. This kid is younger than that - now would be the time to let him and other junior criminals know that this behaviour is not acceptable - to me, that would be a logical action to take if the police are serious about this approach.
So that's my crime story for this week - nothing major, but sadly, a newcomer to our city (the truck owner) has had a not very positive experience, and a kid who hangs around my neighbourhood has not been discouraged from what will likely turn out to be a life of ever-escalating crime. But I won't forget what he looks like, and I'll be watching.
"Pardon one offence, and you encourage the commission of many." - Publius Syrus
When I looked in the garage, I saw that Guthrie's bike had been taken down from the rafters. So, in retrospect, I guess these two criminals-in-training had been interrupted - the girl acting as lookout, closing the garage door so the boy could get the bicycle down without being observed. The girl rode about the neighbourhood for awhile, probably wondering if the boy was still inside the garage. I actually saw him that afternoon in city hall square - when he saw me he took off. And I saw him a couple of weeks ago, riding a bike around the Co-op parking lot - I almost stopped to ask him where he'd stolen it from.
Fast forward to this past Friday morning - I was heading upstairs to the attic to check out my emails, when I saw this same kid looking in the bed of a pick-up truck parked behind one of the apartment buildings behind our house. While I watched, he hopped into the bed of the truck, then slid the back window of the cab open and squeezed in. I called the police.
By the time I got out to the back alley, he had taken off, running between the houses toward Ninth Street. The truck alarm was going off, and the owner of the truck soon came out. As I was talking to her, the police arrived. I told the officer where the kid had gone, and he went off to look for him. Then we saw the kid coming down the back alley, having removed his jacket. The truck owner and I confronted him, and he took off. I called dispatch to ask them to let the officer know that the kid was no longer wearing the jacket, and the dispatch person told me that they were not going to pursue this, because the truck owner had said that she knew the kid. Then we saw the police vehicle pass the kid, now strolling casually down Ninth Street, the proud owner of at least one new CD.
Now, what the truck owner had told the officer was that she thought that she knew the kid, that possibly his grandmother lived in her building. What she hadn't said was that it was okay for him to have broken into her truck, but that seems to be the conclusion that both the officer and dispatch came to. I told dispatch this, and the next thing I know, the officer is at my door, after having paid a visit to the truck owner, to ask me what my problem is.
According to the truck owner, when the officer stopped in to talk to her, he advised her against pressing charges, because to do so would likely result in some form of retaliation, such as her tires being slashed. So apparently, when these petty crimes happen, we're not supposed to call the police, because they are unwilling to do anything, even when the criminal is identifiable, and walking past you.
So, yes, I have a problem. Two, actually. The first is that, given the opportunity to let a kid know that there are consequences to breaking into a vehicle and stealing someone else's property, the officer chose to do nothing. The second is that the officer actively discouraged the victim from pressing charges, because to do so might encourage the criminal to take further action.
I will say that I have since been contacted by the police, who have told me that they know this kid, that there are parenting issues, because apparently he doesn't go to school, but that they are going to follow up with the family. And I appreciate their attention to this, somewhat after the fact. Although I wonder what the odds are of there being some sort of improvement to behaviour, if the family doesn't care enough to get the kid to school.
Now, I know that the police are busy. I know that crimes like shootings and murder are of much greater importance than truck break-ins. But I can't help but think that the time taken for follow-up visits with both the crime victim and me would have been more productive if instead the officer had grabbed the kid, put him in the back seat of the car, and suggested to him that he was going to be on their radar, and any time they saw him in a back alley or hanging about with other kids, they would be pulling over to find out what he was up to. Or why not just toss him in a cell for a few hours, then follow up with the family? In other words, put some fear into him of the consequences of breaking the law, no matter how relatively minor it may seem.
It seemed somewhat ironic to read in the paper that same day that, according to a speech given by the police chief at a Chamber of Commerce lunch, their approach to crime is to "fix it (criminal behaviour) at the lowest level". He even suggests paying "a lot of attention to" people in the fifteen to twenty-four age group, since it's people in that age range who commit the most crimes. This kid is younger than that - now would be the time to let him and other junior criminals know that this behaviour is not acceptable - to me, that would be a logical action to take if the police are serious about this approach.
So that's my crime story for this week - nothing major, but sadly, a newcomer to our city (the truck owner) has had a not very positive experience, and a kid who hangs around my neighbourhood has not been discouraged from what will likely turn out to be a life of ever-escalating crime. But I won't forget what he looks like, and I'll be watching.
"Pardon one offence, and you encourage the commission of many." - Publius Syrus
Sunday, April 18, 2010
The Budget Vote
The budget meeting last week, sadly, wasn't much of a surprise. Despite the glaring inadequacies of both the process and the resulting documents, I was the only member of council to vote against what really is an incomplete effort, both in process and in result.
In fact, this really isn't a budget in the true sense of the word. It sets out, in varying levels of detail, how we propose to spend money this year, and how much more money we will be taking from the taxpayer to fund these efforts. But there was no attempt made to look at previous spending (in fact, when I raised the issue one councillor even claimed that we'd agreed to stick with status quo spending - obviously at one of those meetings that I wasn't invited to). There was no setting of objectives. There was no plan as to how to meet our various obligations - only deferral of things like road maintenance (where our neglected obligations are already at a multi-million dollar level) to some vague future time, when the costs will certainly be greater.
If this were our own personal budget, that's one thing. Let's say you're setting your own household budget. If you decide, for example, to continue buying a full cable package, even though the person in the family who wanted all the sports channels has moved out, well, it's your money. If you want to spend it on non-essentials like cable channels that you no longer watch, rather than fixing the roof, you'll be the one stuck for the damage when the roof starts leaking. But for council, it's not our money, it's the taxpayers who have to trust us not to spend more than we have to, who have to trust us to look at every expenditure to see if it's necessary, and who have to trust us to be spending their money first, on the necessities, then on the nice to haves. Taxpayers could certainly ask why, for example, the mayor and the city manager each need two administrative assistants, for a total of four, when in previous administrations the mayor and the city manager were able to get by sharing one. Ironically, before the budget, it was announced that $4,000 would be cut from the mayor's office budget. That savings was going to be accomplished by leaving one admin assistant position vacant for a month. However, even that small savings won't be realized, since the position has now been speedily filled after a councillor had the temerity to ask during the budget meeting if the position was really necessary.
We also should follow our own policies when doing the budget. For instance, our policy says that we require financial reports from all the entities that we support - the library, the Art Hauser Centre, the Rawlinson Centre, for example, before we approve granting them money for another year. Yet again, the Rawlinson Centre has not provided financials for last year. Not only do we continue to fund them, but this year we have decided to give them an additional $50,000, without even a written request as to why this additional funding is needed. When this sort of thing happens, people start to question what appear to be backroom deals. We talk about being open and accountable, but our actions are exactly the opposite.
We received, once again, a grant from the Northern Lights Casino. This grant is supposed to be used for things that are over and above regular city responsibilities. This year, the money was rolled into the budget, rather than being dealt with separately. This is just wrong, and shouldn't even have been considered.
And finally, and most significantly, the police budget came in with no detail. This has not happened before in my ten years on council. All of a sudden, we are supposed to assume that the police commission is not to be questioned on matters of budget, even though last year they originally budgeted $24,000 for a remote control gadget (which came out of the plans after it was made public), and this year we found out that the local police department replaces its vehicles after only two years of use, even though a bit of investigation by a reporter showed that no other community in western Canada replaces vehicles that quickly. The question that I'm hearing from the public now is "What are they hiding?" If you have a reasonable budget, you shouldn't be afraid to let people see it.
Of course, the response that I got from one councillor was "that's all we legally have to provide". I suppose that legally, he's right. Ethically, it stinks. Perhaps next year the entire budget will be approached that way, as it already is for the police, and the mayor's office budget - forget any detail, let's just have one number for capital expenditures, one for operating expenditures. Because legally, perhaps that's all that's required.
So, after all's said and done, aren't we stuck with this budget? Is it too late to fix it? No, it's not too late. I remember years when the budget wasn't set until May, and somehow, we survived. I realize that a great deal of work has been done; the problem is, the job isn't finished. And instead of just throwing up our hands and accepting a substandard job, we should be digging in, asking questions, cutting unnecessary expenditures, figuring out how we're going to deal with the backlog of poorly maintained roads and lead pipes still in place.
And we should be sharing this process with the public, and seeing how we can improve how we tell people about how we're spending their money.
I can't support this budget, and I can't support the process that was followed. So my only option is to vote against the budget bylaw. I can't support actions of council that so directly contradict the basic tenets of democracy, and that fly in the face of all the promises that are made during elections, and when council is first sworn in.
Open and accountable - no. Closed and arrogant - yes. Sadly, that's not nearly as catchy a slogan.
"It is no use saying 'we are doing our best'. You have to succeed in doing what is necessary." Winston Churchill
In fact, this really isn't a budget in the true sense of the word. It sets out, in varying levels of detail, how we propose to spend money this year, and how much more money we will be taking from the taxpayer to fund these efforts. But there was no attempt made to look at previous spending (in fact, when I raised the issue one councillor even claimed that we'd agreed to stick with status quo spending - obviously at one of those meetings that I wasn't invited to). There was no setting of objectives. There was no plan as to how to meet our various obligations - only deferral of things like road maintenance (where our neglected obligations are already at a multi-million dollar level) to some vague future time, when the costs will certainly be greater.
If this were our own personal budget, that's one thing. Let's say you're setting your own household budget. If you decide, for example, to continue buying a full cable package, even though the person in the family who wanted all the sports channels has moved out, well, it's your money. If you want to spend it on non-essentials like cable channels that you no longer watch, rather than fixing the roof, you'll be the one stuck for the damage when the roof starts leaking. But for council, it's not our money, it's the taxpayers who have to trust us not to spend more than we have to, who have to trust us to look at every expenditure to see if it's necessary, and who have to trust us to be spending their money first, on the necessities, then on the nice to haves. Taxpayers could certainly ask why, for example, the mayor and the city manager each need two administrative assistants, for a total of four, when in previous administrations the mayor and the city manager were able to get by sharing one. Ironically, before the budget, it was announced that $4,000 would be cut from the mayor's office budget. That savings was going to be accomplished by leaving one admin assistant position vacant for a month. However, even that small savings won't be realized, since the position has now been speedily filled after a councillor had the temerity to ask during the budget meeting if the position was really necessary.
We also should follow our own policies when doing the budget. For instance, our policy says that we require financial reports from all the entities that we support - the library, the Art Hauser Centre, the Rawlinson Centre, for example, before we approve granting them money for another year. Yet again, the Rawlinson Centre has not provided financials for last year. Not only do we continue to fund them, but this year we have decided to give them an additional $50,000, without even a written request as to why this additional funding is needed. When this sort of thing happens, people start to question what appear to be backroom deals. We talk about being open and accountable, but our actions are exactly the opposite.
We received, once again, a grant from the Northern Lights Casino. This grant is supposed to be used for things that are over and above regular city responsibilities. This year, the money was rolled into the budget, rather than being dealt with separately. This is just wrong, and shouldn't even have been considered.
And finally, and most significantly, the police budget came in with no detail. This has not happened before in my ten years on council. All of a sudden, we are supposed to assume that the police commission is not to be questioned on matters of budget, even though last year they originally budgeted $24,000 for a remote control gadget (which came out of the plans after it was made public), and this year we found out that the local police department replaces its vehicles after only two years of use, even though a bit of investigation by a reporter showed that no other community in western Canada replaces vehicles that quickly. The question that I'm hearing from the public now is "What are they hiding?" If you have a reasonable budget, you shouldn't be afraid to let people see it.
Of course, the response that I got from one councillor was "that's all we legally have to provide". I suppose that legally, he's right. Ethically, it stinks. Perhaps next year the entire budget will be approached that way, as it already is for the police, and the mayor's office budget - forget any detail, let's just have one number for capital expenditures, one for operating expenditures. Because legally, perhaps that's all that's required.
So, after all's said and done, aren't we stuck with this budget? Is it too late to fix it? No, it's not too late. I remember years when the budget wasn't set until May, and somehow, we survived. I realize that a great deal of work has been done; the problem is, the job isn't finished. And instead of just throwing up our hands and accepting a substandard job, we should be digging in, asking questions, cutting unnecessary expenditures, figuring out how we're going to deal with the backlog of poorly maintained roads and lead pipes still in place.
And we should be sharing this process with the public, and seeing how we can improve how we tell people about how we're spending their money.
I can't support this budget, and I can't support the process that was followed. So my only option is to vote against the budget bylaw. I can't support actions of council that so directly contradict the basic tenets of democracy, and that fly in the face of all the promises that are made during elections, and when council is first sworn in.
Open and accountable - no. Closed and arrogant - yes. Sadly, that's not nearly as catchy a slogan.
"It is no use saying 'we are doing our best'. You have to succeed in doing what is necessary." Winston Churchill
Sunday, March 28, 2010
A Job Worth Doing Is Worth Doing Well - Or Maybe Not
The pattern of the previous council of treating the budget process as a sprint, rather than a well-thought through marathon, has sadly continued with the current council. I can see so many opportunities for improvement in the process, that would likely result in an improved product that better served the tax payers of Prince Albert, but there doesn't seem to be much appetite for improvement around the council table, or with city administration.
To begin before the beginning, council as a whole was not asked for input before city staff began developing the budget - no questions about priorities, goals, or objectives. It could be compared to going to a travel agent to plan a vacation, and they develop a complete plan without asking you where you want to go, what sights you're interested in, or how much money you have to spend. The opportunity to do this could have happened in November, at our so-called strategic planning session, but it didn't.
As well, the assumption is made that whatever is currently being spent will continue that way. The option of zero-based budgeting, in which every current expenditure is looked at, evaluated, and justified, might show some areas for cost-savings - are there some city positions that are currently vacant, that perhaps don't need to be filled, for example. If we increased our vehicle maintenance budget, could we perhaps extend their life, and save money in the long run, would be another example. But apparently it's not worth the effort of thorough examination. Expectations that city facilities such as the Rawlinson Centre submit financial reports before the budgeting process are ignored by administration, who instead suggest increases to organizations which don't even bother to report on how they're spending tax payers' dollars.
And some areas of the budget are not provided in any detail. This year, the budget contained no detail about what is included in the mayor's office budget, for example, or in the budget for the city manager's office. And, most egregiously, and for the first time (although the director of finance tried to tell me that we never receive details on this) the police budget was a single line, with no detail about how they propose to spend more than 11 million dollars, more than 30% of the total city budget. And when I asked to see last year's police budget for a comparison, administration refused to provide it to me.
As I have often pointed out, we rush through our review in a ludicrous amount of time. Council members received budget documents last Friday, March 19. The public didn't have access until Monday, and the public meeting about the budget was on Wednesday - less than two days to review almost a thousand pages of numbers - I've been reviewing city budgets for ten years, and it's never been an easy process, since there's always cross-referencing and moving between the capital and the operating budgets, to find out where items are. No wonder there were only three submissions from the public, and the meeting was over in nineteen minutes.
Then council is supposed to meet on the Friday and Saturday to review the budget, which we've had for less than a week. I'm lucky - I don't have a job outside of council. Other councillors with full-time jobs, or who are taking courses, have to work their way through the documents in less time than I have.
Although we set aside two days to review the budget line by line, this is the fourth year that we've only used half that time, and believe me, the documents haven't gotten any thinner. Items are numbered, and the expectation of the chair seems to be that we can review items in blocks of more than 100 or more - it's hard to keep up, to comment on or ask questions about those items that I've highlighted in my review, and comments and questions are not encouraged.
We started the review at 9 a.m.. We broke for lunch at 12:30, went back at 1:30, then carried on until 6 p.m. Any suggestion that we break for the evening, then reconvene in the morning, wasn't brought forward, since the mood of some in the room was getting a bit testy. Taking a break, then meeting again in the morning, as was already scheduled, would have given us a chance to review what we had done, and ask any questions that might have gotten lost in the blur of speeding through the pages.
The next council meeting will be April 12, at which time we will vote to pass or reject the budget. For council, that's less than a month to review, discuss, and approve a document that in essence sets out our priorities, and decides what is done for the city for the next twelve months. Somehow, I feel that we should put more time and effort into the process - as with most things, the result would probably be something that everyone would feel better about.
"Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything." - Wyatt Earp
To begin before the beginning, council as a whole was not asked for input before city staff began developing the budget - no questions about priorities, goals, or objectives. It could be compared to going to a travel agent to plan a vacation, and they develop a complete plan without asking you where you want to go, what sights you're interested in, or how much money you have to spend. The opportunity to do this could have happened in November, at our so-called strategic planning session, but it didn't.
As well, the assumption is made that whatever is currently being spent will continue that way. The option of zero-based budgeting, in which every current expenditure is looked at, evaluated, and justified, might show some areas for cost-savings - are there some city positions that are currently vacant, that perhaps don't need to be filled, for example. If we increased our vehicle maintenance budget, could we perhaps extend their life, and save money in the long run, would be another example. But apparently it's not worth the effort of thorough examination. Expectations that city facilities such as the Rawlinson Centre submit financial reports before the budgeting process are ignored by administration, who instead suggest increases to organizations which don't even bother to report on how they're spending tax payers' dollars.
And some areas of the budget are not provided in any detail. This year, the budget contained no detail about what is included in the mayor's office budget, for example, or in the budget for the city manager's office. And, most egregiously, and for the first time (although the director of finance tried to tell me that we never receive details on this) the police budget was a single line, with no detail about how they propose to spend more than 11 million dollars, more than 30% of the total city budget. And when I asked to see last year's police budget for a comparison, administration refused to provide it to me.
As I have often pointed out, we rush through our review in a ludicrous amount of time. Council members received budget documents last Friday, March 19. The public didn't have access until Monday, and the public meeting about the budget was on Wednesday - less than two days to review almost a thousand pages of numbers - I've been reviewing city budgets for ten years, and it's never been an easy process, since there's always cross-referencing and moving between the capital and the operating budgets, to find out where items are. No wonder there were only three submissions from the public, and the meeting was over in nineteen minutes.
Then council is supposed to meet on the Friday and Saturday to review the budget, which we've had for less than a week. I'm lucky - I don't have a job outside of council. Other councillors with full-time jobs, or who are taking courses, have to work their way through the documents in less time than I have.
Although we set aside two days to review the budget line by line, this is the fourth year that we've only used half that time, and believe me, the documents haven't gotten any thinner. Items are numbered, and the expectation of the chair seems to be that we can review items in blocks of more than 100 or more - it's hard to keep up, to comment on or ask questions about those items that I've highlighted in my review, and comments and questions are not encouraged.
We started the review at 9 a.m.. We broke for lunch at 12:30, went back at 1:30, then carried on until 6 p.m. Any suggestion that we break for the evening, then reconvene in the morning, wasn't brought forward, since the mood of some in the room was getting a bit testy. Taking a break, then meeting again in the morning, as was already scheduled, would have given us a chance to review what we had done, and ask any questions that might have gotten lost in the blur of speeding through the pages.
The next council meeting will be April 12, at which time we will vote to pass or reject the budget. For council, that's less than a month to review, discuss, and approve a document that in essence sets out our priorities, and decides what is done for the city for the next twelve months. Somehow, I feel that we should put more time and effort into the process - as with most things, the result would probably be something that everyone would feel better about.
"Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything." - Wyatt Earp
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Another Landfill Debate
At Executive Committee this week we had our annual discussion on free weeks at the landfill. With previous councils, free landfill week was in the spring, to fit with most people's time for cleaning up the yard. With this council, we've had four, and last year, five, weeks when people could drop off waste free of charge, to encourage a cleaner city.
Every free week results in $10,000 of lost revenue to the city. These weeks are also subject to abuse, as residents from outside the city take advantage of the opportunity to drop their waste off without charge. And when you take advantage of these weeks, particularly on the Friday and Saturday, the line-ups are long.
Every year for the last three years I have asked if there is a different way of providing Prince Albert residents with the same benefit, while not providing the same benefit to non-taxpayers. I have suggested that each resident get a tag, or tags, if we're going to offer this benefit for multiple weeks. That way, you could use your free week when it met your needs, line-ups would be shorter, and we would remove the opportunity for abuse from non-residents. Tags could be included with water bills - if we can include free advertising for a Raiders fund-raising effort, as was done with the last water bill, surely we could include a tag, or perhaps a punch card, to allow free access to the dump.
And every year, the response from some members of council is predictable - we don't need to change, this would be too complicated. At least this year they have recognized the abuse of the current system from non-residents, so a solution has been suggested. This year, your driver's licence will be checked, to ensure that you are a Prince Albert resident. That will help with the line-ups, I'm sure.
I'm not sure why there is so much resistance to trying to improve the system, while still encouraging residents to clean up their yards. And if the real problem that we're trying to solve is the unrelenting garbage that is one of the least attractive characteristics of this city, more free landfill weeks isn't doing anything to change that. I'm at the point now of thinking that, because of the costs in these tight budget times, we should be reducing the free services that we offer to residents, not continuing to offer them just because they're popular. Sometimes our responsibility is to do the right thing, not the popular thing.
This week is budget week. I'm currently forging my way through two extremely thick budget binders that were delivered on Friday afternoon. The public meeting on the budget is Wednesday - apparently the budget is not yet available on the city web-site, which means that expecting the public to be able to comment in any kind of depth on the budget is unfair, to say the least. Then council will have its budget meetings on Friday and Saturday, although last year's budget meeting lasted only half a day - a ridiculously short time to devote to the most important action that council takes all year. As I say every year at this time, I'm not sure why the rush - it's not like prizes are given for finishing first.
"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future." - John F. Kennedy
Every free week results in $10,000 of lost revenue to the city. These weeks are also subject to abuse, as residents from outside the city take advantage of the opportunity to drop their waste off without charge. And when you take advantage of these weeks, particularly on the Friday and Saturday, the line-ups are long.
Every year for the last three years I have asked if there is a different way of providing Prince Albert residents with the same benefit, while not providing the same benefit to non-taxpayers. I have suggested that each resident get a tag, or tags, if we're going to offer this benefit for multiple weeks. That way, you could use your free week when it met your needs, line-ups would be shorter, and we would remove the opportunity for abuse from non-residents. Tags could be included with water bills - if we can include free advertising for a Raiders fund-raising effort, as was done with the last water bill, surely we could include a tag, or perhaps a punch card, to allow free access to the dump.
And every year, the response from some members of council is predictable - we don't need to change, this would be too complicated. At least this year they have recognized the abuse of the current system from non-residents, so a solution has been suggested. This year, your driver's licence will be checked, to ensure that you are a Prince Albert resident. That will help with the line-ups, I'm sure.
I'm not sure why there is so much resistance to trying to improve the system, while still encouraging residents to clean up their yards. And if the real problem that we're trying to solve is the unrelenting garbage that is one of the least attractive characteristics of this city, more free landfill weeks isn't doing anything to change that. I'm at the point now of thinking that, because of the costs in these tight budget times, we should be reducing the free services that we offer to residents, not continuing to offer them just because they're popular. Sometimes our responsibility is to do the right thing, not the popular thing.
This week is budget week. I'm currently forging my way through two extremely thick budget binders that were delivered on Friday afternoon. The public meeting on the budget is Wednesday - apparently the budget is not yet available on the city web-site, which means that expecting the public to be able to comment in any kind of depth on the budget is unfair, to say the least. Then council will have its budget meetings on Friday and Saturday, although last year's budget meeting lasted only half a day - a ridiculously short time to devote to the most important action that council takes all year. As I say every year at this time, I'm not sure why the rush - it's not like prizes are given for finishing first.
"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future." - John F. Kennedy
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign
Well, maybe not. A proposal came to council from a local company, asking approval to set up an electronic sign at the Tourism Centre, with the possibility of putting up other signs along other corridors through the city. These signs could be used for advertising, both for companies, but also for community events. Being electronic, they could be updated rapidly. And they had the full support of the people at Tourism, who welcomed the opportunity for a new way of getting the news out about what Prince Albert has to offer.
Interestingly, the initial recommendation, without even discussing possible pros and cons, was to reject the proposal. As always, the reasons cited were interesting, with the phrase "We don't want to be opening up a Pandora's box here" coming from one councillor. You would think from that rather cliched phrase, that this is some kind of new, unproven, possibly dangerous idea, that other communities have rejected. Or that by agreeing to one sign we would be giving blanket approval for these signs to be everywhere. It ignores the fact that these signs are already here, even located at city-owned facilities. For example - there's one at the casino. There's one at SIAST. There's one at Carlton. These signs advertise functions at those facilities. And there's one at the Art Hauser Centre, on city-owned property, although the advertising revenues from that one go to the Raiders, not the city. And the concern raised about third parties being able to advertise on the proposed signs ignores the fact that third parties advertise on the Art Hauser Centre sign, so far without causing any sort of disaster that I'm aware of.
I supported this idea for a number of reasons. An agreement with the sign company would have set out the revenue-sharing options - perhaps some could have gone to the sign company, some to the city, some to Tourism, and some to various city-owned facilities that can't support themselves, like the Rawlinson Centre. This would not be money from the taxpayer, but money from an outside source. I thought that such signs would also be a good opportunity to advertise and perhaps increase usage of city facilities - for example, coming into town you could see what was on at the Rawlinson Centre, and perhaps even if there were seats available for whatever event was on that evening. And such signs I think would be a vast improvement over those ugly portable jobs with flourescent lettering that currently blight Second Avenue West, advertising everything from insurance brokers to fast food to Arts Centre activities to upcoming events at the Rawlinson.
But we didn't even get the chance to discuss the options. No discussion, just fear of getting in too deep. Before we make such decisions, I think that it would be better if we looked at each opportunity as just that, perhaps learning from other cities what measures they have taken to take advantage of new technologies to help their communities, rather than reacting with fear over how trying new things might affect our old ways of doing business.
It's similar to our accepting at face value the recommendation from the Police Commission that we replace police vehicles every two years (which we've done ahead of the actual budgeting process, which will once again limit our options once we get there), before finding out that other Saskatchewan cities have a replacement time of three to five years, perhaps because they have found vehicles that last longer. But we don't take the time to do the research, and it seems that we often end up paying more, or missing out on opportunities, without any good reason for doing so.
"If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to keep getting what we're getting." - Stephen Covey
Interestingly, the initial recommendation, without even discussing possible pros and cons, was to reject the proposal. As always, the reasons cited were interesting, with the phrase "We don't want to be opening up a Pandora's box here" coming from one councillor. You would think from that rather cliched phrase, that this is some kind of new, unproven, possibly dangerous idea, that other communities have rejected. Or that by agreeing to one sign we would be giving blanket approval for these signs to be everywhere. It ignores the fact that these signs are already here, even located at city-owned facilities. For example - there's one at the casino. There's one at SIAST. There's one at Carlton. These signs advertise functions at those facilities. And there's one at the Art Hauser Centre, on city-owned property, although the advertising revenues from that one go to the Raiders, not the city. And the concern raised about third parties being able to advertise on the proposed signs ignores the fact that third parties advertise on the Art Hauser Centre sign, so far without causing any sort of disaster that I'm aware of.
I supported this idea for a number of reasons. An agreement with the sign company would have set out the revenue-sharing options - perhaps some could have gone to the sign company, some to the city, some to Tourism, and some to various city-owned facilities that can't support themselves, like the Rawlinson Centre. This would not be money from the taxpayer, but money from an outside source. I thought that such signs would also be a good opportunity to advertise and perhaps increase usage of city facilities - for example, coming into town you could see what was on at the Rawlinson Centre, and perhaps even if there were seats available for whatever event was on that evening. And such signs I think would be a vast improvement over those ugly portable jobs with flourescent lettering that currently blight Second Avenue West, advertising everything from insurance brokers to fast food to Arts Centre activities to upcoming events at the Rawlinson.
But we didn't even get the chance to discuss the options. No discussion, just fear of getting in too deep. Before we make such decisions, I think that it would be better if we looked at each opportunity as just that, perhaps learning from other cities what measures they have taken to take advantage of new technologies to help their communities, rather than reacting with fear over how trying new things might affect our old ways of doing business.
It's similar to our accepting at face value the recommendation from the Police Commission that we replace police vehicles every two years (which we've done ahead of the actual budgeting process, which will once again limit our options once we get there), before finding out that other Saskatchewan cities have a replacement time of three to five years, perhaps because they have found vehicles that last longer. But we don't take the time to do the research, and it seems that we often end up paying more, or missing out on opportunities, without any good reason for doing so.
"If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to keep getting what we're getting." - Stephen Covey
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)