Council has voted to direct the City of St. Albert to annually report on the consultants it has hired and their costs in an effort to increase transparency.
During their Sept. 6 meeting, council voted to have administration draw up a report at each year's mid-way point. The report will detail consultants hired in the previous year, their cost, and the city's reasoning for their hire. The future reports will be publicly available, and included as an agenda item at a council meeting.
The motion — put forward by Coun. Shelley Biermanski, followed an April information request for a list of all consultants contracted by the city in 2021 and 2022. The report was initially released by the city in June and reflected costs from January 2021 to March 31 of 2022.
The city has since updated the report to reflect costs up to June 30, 2022. It is available as an information request on the city's website.
The updated report reflected some $1.76 million in consulting costs. Overall, the list included more than 100 individual charges. Examples of big-ticket items included $173,512 to DLA Piper for consulting on a confidential “revenue opportunity,” and $75,000 for an energy corporation feasibility study with Ernst & Young.
Several fees were below $10,000, for example consulting for a traffic control manual ($7,200) and media training for council's onboarding orientation ($1,725).
Biermanski said doing the report annually will help bring clarity to city spending on consultants for administration, council, and the public.
“It’s good to see where our dollars are going,” Biermanski said.
Administration told council preparing the report annually would take around 52 hours of work.
“This time can vary depending on the amount of information in that year and the ease of obtaining that information,” an administrative backgrounder said.
Brenda Barclay, the city’s manager of financial operations and reporting, told council the city can see costs by department, but the work of soliciting departments for additional information explaining the reason behind consulting costs is the part of the process that is the most time consuming.
Asked by Coun. Sheena Hughes whether the process might require less time in the future, Barclay said it would depend on how many transactions the city has, the number of invoices, and the time departments take to respond.
Biermanski said 52 hours would be “minor” in comparison to potential cost savings that could be found in creating an annual report, arguing the act of reporting the costs could encourage city staff to more actively consider whether the scope of consulting is necessary.
Coun. Natalie Joly disagreed with Biermanski, saying she doesn’t “see the value of increasing our costs to get into the weeds.”
Similarly, Mayor Cathy Heron said she doesn’t see the value in using 52 hours of staff time to create a consultant report.
“Honestly, the value that we’re going to get out of this 52 hours is just not there for me,” Heron said. “Our staff have said it’s not easy, and 52 hours is time spent elsewhere, especially when we’re hearing that our staff are stretched to the limit at this time.”
Hughes said the goal of the motion is to explain the costs and strive for caution when it comes to spending.
“As soon as you know something is going to be brought to light, you think about it twice before you do it,” Hughes said. “Then we can be more assured that what’s being brought forward is something we can justify to the public.”
The motion passed 5-2, with Joly and Heron opposed.
