City Council passes fiscal performance review resolution

A plan identifying a review schedule, and areas of focus, is to be submitted to Council this January.

Deputy Mayor Ryan Parker, who is chairing Finance Committee’s operating budget deliberations this week, says they’re seeking a frank, objective assessment of the strengths, efficiencies and opportunities for improvement that exists throughout the organization.

“As we begin budget deliberations, now is the right time to be taking an in-depth look at City operations,” Parker added.

The review will be carried out by a third party, which will be selected through a competitive process, and funded through internal funding sources.

City Manager Bramwell Strain explained that he has some discretionary funding within his budget to fund things like studies and planning exercises.

“I’ll simply prioritize this as the first one, so that money exists.”

The third party selected will build on benchmarking work already completed to date as well as lessons learned in other jurisdictions.

Council also directed that they receive regular updates to stay current on progress, decision points and implementation timelines.

The fiscal performance reviews will now tie directly into the budget discussions, as councillors will have the option if they choose to defer certain initiatives until the review is complete or to amend how funding is doled out.

Carlson says it’s up to every individual councillor how they’re going to vote, or move things forward this week but it does give them some comfort knowing they’re going to be doing these thorough reviews first.

“So, maybe we can maybe hold off on some initiatives, we can say let’s wait for the review, figure out how we’re doing things,” Carlson stated.

Another resolution was passed Monday morning, to take $3 million from the previous budget surplus and place it in the reserves for appropriate council strategic initiatives.

This resolution was also brought forward by Councillor Carlson, who explained his reasoning.

“The reason I did reserve the $3 million is because we haven’t had the opportunity to sit down with our City Manager and build a work plan for our strategic plan. There may be some strategic priorities of council that haven’t made their way into this budget yet, so I want to give council the flexibility to know that we can develop some initiatives and they’ll be funding for those over the next three years,” Carlson said.

The last review of this kind hasn’t been completed in some time, previous to Carlson’s time on council which has been for the past 11 years, so he simply believes it’s time.

“We’ve done a lot in council and as a corporation comparing with other communities around Alberta, benchmarking ourselves, and I think we’ve got some really good external data to compare ourselves to,” Carlson continued. “This will give us the internal data, so we know exactly how we’re doing things, if it’s the appropriate way, and if it’s what the community still expects.“There are some things that do cost a lot of money, but we do know the community wants it. The value proposition has to be taken into account, it can’t be all dollars and cents.”

The man who will spearhead these reviews called it a very prudent decision.

“In order to make decisions on how you’re going to spend a billion plus dollars over four years, you need to have facts, you need to have data, and the understanding of how we do business,” Strain explained. “What this really allows us to do is give a deep dive into what each business unit does, the how, the what, the if and should we be doing it.”

Once a recommended 2019-2022 Operating Budget is approved by the Finance Committee, it is expected to come before City Council on Nov. 26 for formal approval.

by Aaron Mahoney (@Mahones93 on Twitter)

City Council passes fiscal performance review resolution

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