Post by Max on Feb 27, 2007 21:25:39 GMT -3
www.thesudburystar.com/webapp/sitepages/content.asp?contentID=421993&catname=Local+News
Staff, not council, frames discussion
St.Pierre, Denis
Local News - Tuesday, February 27, 2007 @ 11:00
During the tumultuous 2003-06 term of Greater Sudbury city council, there were instances that prompted municipal officials and observers to ask a nagging question: Did our mayor and council have a grasp of certain issues they were expected to resolve in the best interests of taxpayers?
The observation was not limited to cynical, hypercritical city hall reporters.
Municipal employees, from both union and management ranks, often decried that, from their perspective, council was not getting all the facts and figures they needed to make the most-informed decisions possible.
"So much information is being kept from (council)" by city bureaucrats, lamented one former, high-ranking city official during the previous term.
"They (staff) keep them very busy, with all kinds of documents to read, but they tell them next to nothing about things they should know. So they're pretty uninformed when they have to make these decisions."
Why wouldn't councillors put up a stink about a lack of information, the former official was asked. In some cases, he suggested, it was simply blissful ignorance.
"They don't know that they don't know" they're missing vital information, he said.
Whether the same will be said for the current edition of city council - still in the early stages of a four-year term - remains to be seen.
But as this group wades into the labyrinthine world of budget deliberations for the first time, familiar signs are emerging.
A case in point was Monday's budget meeting, when council spent more than three hand-wringing hours fretting over the multimillion-dollar increase in its winter roads maintenance costs over the last couple of years.
Monday's debate was largely framed and guided by senior city staff, rather than by council, much in the same fashion this has been accomplished in previous years.
After being buried last week with a 700-page 2007 draft budget - which by now they've surely sifted through from cover to cover - council received scores of additional pages of budget-related documents to examine Monday.
Among the latest documents were staff reports and proposals on the winter roads maintenance issue, including several different cost-cutting options for council's consideration.
The winter roads budget has skyrocketed in the last couple of years, for a number of reasons, councillors were told. Those legitimate factors include legislative changes restricting manpower allocation, unusual weather patterns and collective agreement provisions, staff reported.
Councillors - bless their little souls - made valiant attempts at wading through it all, to get to the nub of the issue. They asked about snowplow response times, snow accumulation standards, the perceived failings of a much-maligned consultant's report, how a budget deficit would be covered, how much it would cost to cancel contracts with private contractors, etc.
Councillors did not object when some of their straightforward questions could not be answered, even though the meeting was called strictly to deal with the winter roads issue.
Moreover, it appeared that council, to a person, was unaware of information that presumably would help them come to the best resolution to this issue.
For example, copies of the numerous contracts the city signed last year with private contractors who have assumed a larger role in maintaining winter roads (at the expense of municipal staff).
Or a discomfiting report from 2006 that would appear to contradict, or at least raise questions about, the latest budget information from city staff.
In late April 2006, the city's senior administration presented council with a report showing that the much-maligned winter roads plan could still balance its budget by year end.
The report stated that, as of the end of March 2006, the city had spent $7.3 million, or 73 per cent of the annual winter roads budget.
That left $2.8 million for the remainder of spring and the coming fall.
If snowfall was light in the late spring and fall of 2006, city staff said, the $10.1-million winter roads budget could be balanced. As it turned out, the weather did indeed co-operate for the remainder of 2006. So was the budget balanced, at $10.1 million? Nope.
Instead, the final tally for 2006 came in at roughly $15 million. That's right, between April 1 and Dec. 31 of last year, when there was little snow, another $7.7 million in costs was attributed to the winter roads budget.
Last April's report and the questions it raises did not come up during Monday's budget meeting. Apparently, because council was unaware or had forgotten about the report and because staff felt it was not relevant.
When the report's implications were pursued by a reporter, city staff was able to account for about $2.5 million of the $5-million budget overrun. The rest? We'll get back to you.
Staff, not council, frames discussion
St.Pierre, Denis
Local News - Tuesday, February 27, 2007 @ 11:00
During the tumultuous 2003-06 term of Greater Sudbury city council, there were instances that prompted municipal officials and observers to ask a nagging question: Did our mayor and council have a grasp of certain issues they were expected to resolve in the best interests of taxpayers?
The observation was not limited to cynical, hypercritical city hall reporters.
Municipal employees, from both union and management ranks, often decried that, from their perspective, council was not getting all the facts and figures they needed to make the most-informed decisions possible.
"So much information is being kept from (council)" by city bureaucrats, lamented one former, high-ranking city official during the previous term.
"They (staff) keep them very busy, with all kinds of documents to read, but they tell them next to nothing about things they should know. So they're pretty uninformed when they have to make these decisions."
Why wouldn't councillors put up a stink about a lack of information, the former official was asked. In some cases, he suggested, it was simply blissful ignorance.
"They don't know that they don't know" they're missing vital information, he said.
Whether the same will be said for the current edition of city council - still in the early stages of a four-year term - remains to be seen.
But as this group wades into the labyrinthine world of budget deliberations for the first time, familiar signs are emerging.
A case in point was Monday's budget meeting, when council spent more than three hand-wringing hours fretting over the multimillion-dollar increase in its winter roads maintenance costs over the last couple of years.
Monday's debate was largely framed and guided by senior city staff, rather than by council, much in the same fashion this has been accomplished in previous years.
After being buried last week with a 700-page 2007 draft budget - which by now they've surely sifted through from cover to cover - council received scores of additional pages of budget-related documents to examine Monday.
Among the latest documents were staff reports and proposals on the winter roads maintenance issue, including several different cost-cutting options for council's consideration.
The winter roads budget has skyrocketed in the last couple of years, for a number of reasons, councillors were told. Those legitimate factors include legislative changes restricting manpower allocation, unusual weather patterns and collective agreement provisions, staff reported.
Councillors - bless their little souls - made valiant attempts at wading through it all, to get to the nub of the issue. They asked about snowplow response times, snow accumulation standards, the perceived failings of a much-maligned consultant's report, how a budget deficit would be covered, how much it would cost to cancel contracts with private contractors, etc.
Councillors did not object when some of their straightforward questions could not be answered, even though the meeting was called strictly to deal with the winter roads issue.
Moreover, it appeared that council, to a person, was unaware of information that presumably would help them come to the best resolution to this issue.
For example, copies of the numerous contracts the city signed last year with private contractors who have assumed a larger role in maintaining winter roads (at the expense of municipal staff).
Or a discomfiting report from 2006 that would appear to contradict, or at least raise questions about, the latest budget information from city staff.
In late April 2006, the city's senior administration presented council with a report showing that the much-maligned winter roads plan could still balance its budget by year end.
The report stated that, as of the end of March 2006, the city had spent $7.3 million, or 73 per cent of the annual winter roads budget.
That left $2.8 million for the remainder of spring and the coming fall.
If snowfall was light in the late spring and fall of 2006, city staff said, the $10.1-million winter roads budget could be balanced. As it turned out, the weather did indeed co-operate for the remainder of 2006. So was the budget balanced, at $10.1 million? Nope.
Instead, the final tally for 2006 came in at roughly $15 million. That's right, between April 1 and Dec. 31 of last year, when there was little snow, another $7.7 million in costs was attributed to the winter roads budget.
Last April's report and the questions it raises did not come up during Monday's budget meeting. Apparently, because council was unaware or had forgotten about the report and because staff felt it was not relevant.
When the report's implications were pursued by a reporter, city staff was able to account for about $2.5 million of the $5-million budget overrun. The rest? We'll get back to you.