And now, for something equally annoying to the recent federal balloting — municipal elections. Only this time, it is important.
For much of my adult life, mayors, reeves, and councillors were made up of business and community leaders who donated a couple of years as a public service to their local towns and cities with a view to ensuring the tax dollars their fellow citizens provided were spent in a manner which maintained necessary public services and utilities.
That has changed. Those who now seek office must be prepared to commit four years of their time to the positions they will occupy. And while we in St. Albert have decided the mayoral position should be paid full time, and councillors would be elected as part-time paid community volunteers, it doesn’t work that way if we are to have a functional governing council.
The expanded sophistication in infrastructure and municipal planning, social, cultural, and recreational services that our municipalities have taken on over the past three decades have increased the role of local governments in our daily lives as well the amount of money they now manage. Along with this has been the exponential growth of the city government and executive power of the city manager.
The issue before us now is to what extent the city is to be virtually owned and operated by city administration — with the input of an elected public advisory and marketing board (aka city council). Or whether the city is owned by its citizens who elect a board of governors that has an employed staff who carry out its policies and deliver its programs.
The time has come for our next city council to determine its principal focus of responsibilities. If the next council decides to continue to only be responsive to and responsible for the running of the city administrations’ internal business demands, we can expect the agenda will persist in being driven and controlled by the city manager.
Alternately, if the council decides it is to principally be responsive to the views of its citizens and the development of its community, its primary focus will start to look at community groups, businesses, and public agencies as partners and no longer as external stakeholders.
In practical terms, this means when reviewing projects or programs it wants operated or developed, council will first look to community and private-sector sources to find out if the expertise is already available that can do the job at the same cost as the city administration. Should the full range of service not be immediately available but the expertise and interest to develop it is, then a bridging partnership should be entered. If neither is available, council would, at that juncture, be in a defensible position to create the bureaucracy in-house to deliver the service.
This approach has been called the community development model. In fact, a previous city council had approved this approach in the dim and hidden past, but then buried the idea. In today’s world this pre-supposes that regional governmental consultations have been undertaken and partnerships deferred.
Wouldn’t it have been interesting if council had taken this approach with the controversial waste-management project and the more recent solar-panel farm?
But then we don’t own the city. We just pay rent to City Hall. Or do we?
Alan Murdock is a local pediatrician.
