First step

Bold is good. Bold disrupts. Stirs urgency. Bold ideas are welcome, and likely necessary, to rouse a stodgy, risk-focused bureaucracy in which inertia has become a defining characteristic.

And this was a bold move.

Last week, Andreas Bolik, the first-term councillor from Ameliasburgh, sought and won support to direct management to find 10 per cent in savings from its municipal operating budgets. Ten per cent. Across the board. This was bold.

Boldness brings risk. It raises the prospect of unintended consequences. Furthermore, the odds, as in Vegas, are structured to favour the house. Entrenched interests versus transient part-timers. The exhilarating sense of control councillors may feel now is mostly an illusion.

This new council must be ready for the blowback. It will be profound. They will be bombarded with concepts of compliance standards, duty-of-care and mandated responsibilities. They will be advised in stark terms that cutting operating budgets will impair municipal services, and ultimately put residents at risk. And that they, and they alone, will bear direct responsibility for the negative consequences.

This exercise will be a test of this young council’s agility, unity and conviction.

But by serving notice in July, Bolik and his colleagues are giving County managers plenty of notice—before the December budget (potentially postponed to February)— to figure out how they might meet these targets.

Wisely, Bolik anticipated the pushback. His motion asks each department to categorize spending in terms of whether it is: a) mandated by statute (by law or provincial dictate), b) mandated by policy (municipal rules and compliance standards), or, c) other.

This need not be a destructive exercise, notwithstanding the doomsday scenarios that will be splattered in vivid colours in council chambers when this project surfaces again. Ten per cent is not a fantastical ambition. Operating budgets, as measured by the tax levy we all pay (that is, total expenditures minus total revenue), have increased an average 6.3 per cent every year for the past two decades. Three times the rate of inflation. It has increased nearly four times since 1998. Every year for the past two decades folks on fixed incomes have paid a greater share of their earnings on keeping the ravenous municipal business fed.

It tests credulity to suggest that trimming 10 per cent will break the municipal machine.

Municipal staff is encouraged to embark on this exercise in good faith and with the understanding that organizational renewal can be healthy and ultimately regenerative. It will be difficult for some to see this as anything other than unwelcome meddling— that the budgets they present each year already reflect the hard business of making choices and saying no

But no operation or organization is beyond scrutiny. It is entirely reasonable that managers defend their expenditures and headcount from time to time. This need not mean staff cuts. It does, however, mean accountability. This is proper governance.

Circumstances change. Priorities shift. It is surely right and fair that council satisfies itself, from time to time, that its operations still fit current requirements and pressures. Far too often we continue to do things, simply because that is the way we have always done them.

Bolik’s motion doesn’t see extracted efficiencies necessarily being returned to property taxpayers, but rather to be directed instead to what are described as strategic priorities. That will create its own set of hazards, but we will come these another day. For now, it is enough that they have taken the first steps.

Above all, bold moves require diligence. Once one starts down this path, they must see it through—regardless of how hard it gets. And it will get very hard. The walls have already gone up. If council loses its nerve midway through this exercise, they may just as well go home now. They will be relegated to arranging the deck chairs on this wobbly ship.

Take a long, hard look under every stone. Don’t assume that because it falls into the mandated bucket, it is untouchable. Mandates prescribe outcomes. How we reach that outcome is a matter that is open to interpretation. There are always choices.

And finally, this project need not be completed in the next six months. Take the time that is needed. Council has taken a bold step forward. From here it is one step forward at a time. Steady onward.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca